1. And it happened at this time. The formulaic indication of time is deliberately vague. The entire story of Judah and the sons he begets spans more than twenty years. It reads as though it began after the moment Joseph is sold down to Egypt, but the larger chronology of the Joseph story and the descent into Egypt suggests that the first phase of this story about Judah may considerably antedate Joseph’s enslavement. Many readers have sensed this tale of Judah and Tamar as an “interruption” of the Joseph story, or, at best, as a means of building suspense about Joseph’s fate in Egypt. In fact, there is an intricate network of connections with what precedes and what follows, as close attention to the details of the text will reveal.

went down. The verb is justified by topography because Judah is coming down from the hill country to the eastern edge of the coastal plain inhabited by the Canaanites. But “going down” is also the verb used for travel to Egypt (compare the end of verse 25 in the preceding chapter), and the next episode, which returns to the Joseph story, will begin with the words, “And Joseph was brought down to Egypt.”

3. she . . . called. The Masoretic Text has “he called,” but the more likely naming of the child by the mother, as in verse 4, is supported by several manuscript traditions.

7. And Er, Judah’s firstborn, was evil in the eyes of the LORD. The nature of his moral failing remains unspecified, but given the insistent pattern of reversal of primogeniture in all these stories, it seems almost sufficient merely to be firstborn in order to incur God’s displeasure: though the firstborn is not necessarily evil, he usually turns out to be obtuse, rash, wild, or otherwise disqualified from carrying on the heritage. It is noteworthy that Judah, who invented the lie that triggered his own father’s mourning for a dead son, is bereaved of two sons in rapid sequence. In contrast to Jacob’s extravagant grief, nothing is said about Judah’s emotional response to the losses.

8. do your duty as brother-in-law. In the Hebrew, this is a single verb, yabem, referring to the so-called levirate marriage. The legal obligation of yibum, which was a widespread practice in the ancient Near East, was incurred when a man died leaving his wife childless. His closest brother in order of birth was obliged to become his proxy, “raising up seed” for him by impregnating his widow. The dead brother would thus be provided a kind of biological continuity, and the widow would be able to produce progeny, which was a woman’s chief avenue of fulfillment in this culture.

9. the seed would not be his. Evidently, Onan is troubled by the role of sexual proxy, which creates a situation in which the child he begets will be legally considered his dead brother’s offspring.

he would waste his seed on the ground. Despite the confusion engendered by the English term “onanism” that derives from this text, the activity referred to is almost certainly coitus interruptus—as Rashi vividly puts it, “threshing within, winnowing without.”

11. Stay a widow in your father’s house. The childless Tamar is not only neglected but must submit to a form of social disgrace in having to return to her father’s house after having been twice married. Since enough time elapses for Shelah to grow from prepuberty to at least late adolescence (see verse 14), this period of enforced return to the status of an unmarried daughter proves to be a very long one. Amos Funkenstein has observed to me that Tamar remains silent in the face of her father-in-law’s condemnation, saying nothing of Onan’s sexual aberration and leaving Judah to suppose that the death of both sons is somehow her fault. And although he banishes her to her father’s house, she evidently remains under his legal jurisdiction, as his issuing of a death sentence against her (verse 24) indicates.

12. after the mourning period. The Hebrew says literally, “and Judah was consoled,” a verb that may refer to actual feelings or to the simple end of the prescribed period of mourning. Either way, we pick up the antithetical echo of Jacob’s refusal of consolation at the end of the previous chapter. The death of Judah’s wife and the ensuing mourning set up the condition of sexual neediness that motivates his encounter with Tamar.

sheepshearers. As we know from elsewhere in the Bible, sheepshearing was the occasion for elaborate festivities, with abundant food and drink. In this way, Judah’s going up to join his sheepshearers is itself an indication that he is done with the rites of mourning and is perhaps in a holiday mood. The verb twice used for this journey is to “go up,” the complementary opposite of the going down with which the chapter begins.

14. sat by the entrance to Enaim. If, as is quite likely, this place-name means “Twin Wells,” we probably have here a kind of wry allusion to the betrothal type-scene: the bridegroom encountering his future spouse by a well in a foreign land. One wonders whether the two wells might resonate with her two marriages, or with the twins she will bear. In any case, instead of a feast and the conclusion of a betrothal agreement, here we have a brusque goods-for-services business dialogue, followed by sex.

16. Here, pray, let me come to bed with you. Despite the particle of entreaty naʾ, “pray,” this is brutally direct: there is no preface of polite greeting to the woman, and the Hebrew idiom, repeatedly used in this story, says literally, “let me come into you.” Judah’s sexual importunacy becomes a background of contrast for Joseph’s sexual restraint in the next chapter.

What will you give me for coming to bed with me? Tamar is careful to speak in character with her role as a roadside whore, but as the events unfold, it becomes clear that she also has an ulterior consideration in mind.

17. a kid from the flock. Though this is plausible enough payment coming from a prosperous pastoralist in a barter culture, it also picks up the motif of the slaughtered kid whose blood was used by Judah and his brothers to deceive Jacob (as Jacob before them used a kid to deceive his father). This connection was aptly perceived a millennium and a half ago in the Midrash Bereishit Rabba. The other material element in the brothers’ deception of their father was a garment; Tamar uses a garment—the whore’s dress and veil—to deceive her father-in-law.

Only if you give a pledge. Tamar is not only bold and enterprising in getting for herself the justice Judah has denied her but also very shrewd: she realizes it is crucial for her to retain evidence of the paternity of the child she may conceive.

18. Your seal-and-cord, and the staff in your hand. The seal was a cylinder seal attached to a cord and usually worn around the neck. Rolled over documents incised in clay, it would be the means of affixing a kind of self-notarized signature. It is less clear that the staff had a legal function, though of course in political contexts it is a symbol of authority. Tamar’s stipulated pledge, then, is an extravagant one: taking the instruments of Judah’s legal identity and social standing is something like taking a person’s driver’s license and credit cards in modern society.

he gave them to her and he came to bed with her and she conceived by him. The rapid chain of verbs suggests the pragmatically focused nature of the transaction for both participants. The last of the three verbs reveals that Tamar gets exactly what she has aimed for.

20. by the hand . . . the woman’s hand. As elsewhere, the physical concreteness of the terms of the narrative is salient: Hirah brings in his hand a kid in order to take back the pledge from the hand of the roadside whore. Since she remains anonymous for Judah, the narrator is careful to refer to her here as “the woman” rather than by name.

21. the place. The Masoretic Text has “her place,” but the more plausible “the place,” as in the next verse, is supported by several of the ancient versions.

the cult-harlot. Hirah substitutes the more decorous term qedeshah, a woman who practices ritual prostitution in a fertility cult, for the narrator’s frank zonah, “whore.”

23. Let her take them, lest we be a laughingstock. Let her keep the pledge, and we will keep our mouths shut, lest it become known that I have given such valuable objects for a fleeting pleasure. Abraham ibn Ezra shrewdly observes: “In his great lust, he gave three [precious] things for a trivial thing.”

24. played the whore . . . conceived by her whoring. The very term that Hirah fastidiously avoided is twice thrust into Judah’s attention, zantah (played the whore) and zenunim (whoring).

And Judah said, “Take her out to be burned.” The precipitous speed of Judah’s judgment, without the slightest reflection or call for evidence, is breathtaking. The peremptory character of the death sentence—and burning was reserved in biblical law only for the most atrocious crimes—is even more evident in the Hebrew, where Judah’s decree consists of only two words, a verb in the imperative (“take-her-out”) followed by “that-she-beburned,” hotsiʾuha wetisaref.

25. Out she was taken. There is no pause between the enunciation of the death sentence and the beginning of its implementation. This speed is highlighted grammatically in the Hebrew by the unusual use of a passive present participle (cognate with “take her out”)—hiʾ mutsʾeit, literally, “she is-being-taken-out.”

when she sent . . . “Recognize, pray.” Like a trap suddenly springing closed, the connection with the preceding story of the deception of Jacob is now fully realized. In precise correspondence to Judah and his brothers, Tamar “sends” evidence—in this case, true evidence—to argue her case. Like them, she confronts the father figure with the imperative, “Recognize, pray” (haker-naʾ)—this echo, too, was picked up by the Midrash—and, like his father, Judah is compelled to acknowledge that he recognizes what has been brought to him.

26. She is more in the right than I. The verb used, tsadaq, is a legal term: it is she who has presented the convincing evidence. But in the next clause Judah also concedes that he has behaved unjustly toward Tamar, so that in a sense her taking the law into her own hands, however unconventional the act, is vindicated by his words.

27–30. The twins of course recall Jacob and Esau and the whole chain of paired brothers struggling over the right of the firstborn. Zerah, sticking his hand out first, seems to be the firstborn, but he is overtaken by Perez, who makes a “breach” or “bursts forth” (the meaning of the Hebrew Perets). Tamar seems to address the energetic newborn in a tone of wondering affection in the exclamation she pronounces as preface to naming him. Again, the Masoretic Text has “he called his name,” but the reading of several of the ancient versions, “she called,” makes much better sense. Perez will become the progenitor of the kings of Judah. The name Zerah means “shining,” as in the dawning of the sun, and so is linked with the scarlet thread on his hand. The scarlet in turn associates Zerah with Esau-the-Red, another twin displaced from his initial position as firstborn.