Judah and his Daughter-in-Law – Keeping things in the Family

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This story is about Judah. He is a son of Israel (the man, not the country) and is one of the guys that sold his brother Joseph (the guy with the coat of many colors) to slave traders. The word Jew comes from Judah.

Well, after selling off Joseph of the Technicolor Dream Coat, but before moving to Egypt to live off Joseph’s success; Judah found a wife for his firstborn son, Er. Her name was Tamar. It turns out that Er wasn’t such a great guy so God killed him. This doesn’t sit very well with Judah so he sat down his second son Onan and explained that he was going to have to marry Tamar now and make babies which would count as Er’s children.

Onan decided he didn’t want to make babies if they were weren’t going to count as his, so when having sex with his sister-in-law/wife he used the best form of birth control available to him: early withdrawal (also known as Onanism, what are the odds, right?). The bible isn’t clear if God doesn’t like letting sperm hit the ground or not making babies for your brother. In either case, Onan is guilty so God kills him too. Christianity in general decided this verse is more about wasting sperm than not making babies for your brother. It is the basis for the condemnation of masturbation and birth control. I.E. don’t use birth control or God will kill you.

According to tradition, Tamar should then have passed on the Judah’s third son, Shelah. However, Judah was starting to think that any dude who marries Tamar ends up dead so he told her she needed to move back in with her parents and wait until Shelah was fully grown before being passed off to him.

Well, because Judah didn’t want Tamar’s vagina to kill Shelah he didn’t let them get married after Shelah was fully grown.  Tamar decided this was no good so when Judah was out tending the sheep one day she dressed up like a hooker and waited for Judah to come by. Of course, being the upstanding guy he was, Judah saw a hooker (didn’t realize it was his man-killing daughter-in-law) and asked her for sex. Tamar asked him how much he was willing to pay and Judah promised her a sheep. Since he didn’t have any sheep with him just then, Tamer asked him to leave his ring, bracelets, and staff as security. They have sex and Tamar gets pregenant, but she doesn’t show up later to trade Judah’s bling for the sheep.

Eventually Judah finds out that Tamar is pregnant and he ordered her to be burned for having sex without his permission. She showed up for the burning and told everyone the father was the owner of the ring, bracelets, and staff. Judah realized he was the father so he didn’t have his daughter-in-law burned. She was allowed to live and a few months later squeezed out her father-in-law’s babies: twins.

Ref: Gensis 38