Note: Devotional taken from last Sunday's sermon on Genesis 38.
“And Judah acknowledged them, and said, She hath been more righteous than I…” (Genesis 38:26).
Genesis 37 ended in v. 36 with the note that Joseph was sold
as a slave into the house of
Potiphar. The Joseph narrative will continue in Genesis 39:1. But what is
in-between Genesis 37 and Genesis 39? Genesis 38.
This chapter is not about Joseph. In fact, Joseph’s name is
not even mentioned. Some
of the old rationalistic scholars of the modern era even went so far as to say,
wrongly, that this chapter had
been forcibly inserted into the
account of Joseph narrative, sort of like trying to ram a square peg into a round hole, denying the unity and
integrity and preservation of Holy Scripture.
Genesis 38 is about Joseph’s brother Judah (cf. 37:26-27). So what are we to make of it? What
spiritual lessons do we find? It really is a sordid story. It is an R-rated
story. Judah does almost everything wrong:
He chooses ungodly companions (vv. 1, 12).
He does
not choose a godly wife (v. 2).
He burns
with lust (v. 2, 15-16).
He
raises two elder sons who are so wicked that God strikes them down (vv. 7-10).
He does
not provide for his son’s widow Tamar (v. 11, 14).
He makes
promises to her that he either never had any intention of keeping or simply
refused to keep (v. 11).
He seeks
out a woman whom he thinks is a harlot (but is really Tamar in disguise) (vv.
15-16).
Driven
by impetuous lustful desires, he
offers up precious tokens (v. 18).
He
commits fornication with a woman he thinks is a prostitute (v. 18).
He is a
hypocrite, who orders the death penalty for his daughter in law, but takes no
accountability for himself (v. 24).
He only
seems to express remorse when he is exposed (v. 26).
The label over this entire chapter
could be simply, “total depravity.”
The only sliver of light appears
when Judah at
least acknowledges that Tamar’s righteousness exceeded his own (v. 26). This
foreshadows the fact that
later when he and his bothers
are confronted with what they did to their brother Joseph, they will feel shame and remorse. Relating
to Joseph, it also sets up a foil with what happens next to Joseph in
Potiphar’s house in Genesis 39. Whereas Judah ran headlong into fornication,
Joseph will flee from it (39:18).
Still, we ask: How could
anything good come from unrighteous Judah?
As in Genesis 37, God is also
seemingly absent from this chapter, his name never being mentioned. He is there,
however, as an unmentioned presence working out his will, and pulling it out of
even twisted and ungodly circumstances.
Tamar had twin sons of Judah, Pharez (or Phares) and Zarah (vv. 27-30). To get
the significance of this we need to turn to the genealogies of the Lord Jesus
Christ in the Gospels. Matthew 1:3 (in the line of Joseph, Christ’s legal father) lists Phares “of
Tamar” in the family tree of our Lord. Luke 3:33 also lists Phares in the line
of Mary, his natural mother.
From this line, in the fulness
of time, would come the Lord Jesus Christ. As one has put it, God very often strikes
straight licks from crooked sticks. From unrighteous Judah came Christ, the
standard of righteousness. God is working out his plan of salvation in Christ, in the midst of a fallen world, and this
plan cannot be thwarted by the unrighteousness of men!
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