Tamar
ca. 1700 BC
Judah, patriarch of Israel, arranged for a Canaanite woman named Tamar to marry his eldest
son Er, but Er was wicked in the eyes of God, so God killed him
before he could get Tamar pregnant. Rather than let Er's line die out, God
ordered the middle brother Onan to take
over and impregnate Tamar on his brother's behalf. But then Onan
dropped the ball, or more
specifically, he spilled his seed on the ground, so God struck him
dead. Now
Tamar was a double widow. Judah still had one living son left, but at
this point Judah worried that Tamar killed everyone she touched, so he wouldn't let her anywhere near his third and
final son. Instead, Judah returned Tamar to her father.
The problem from Tamar's standpoint was that she was now a childless
widow,
which was probably the most useless thing a person could be in Biblical
times. She needed to catch a man who would take care of her, so when
Judah went off to a community sheep-shearing, Tamar disguised
herself as a prostitute with a veil, and followed him. Judah liked what
he saw - or at least, he liked the parts he could see - and hired this
nameless stranger to scratch his itch. They haggled a bit. Judah didn't
have any cash with him, so he gave her some personal trinkets to hold as collateral
until he returned with the money. Then they got down to business.
A few months later, Judah heard rumors that his daughter-in-law Tamar was pregnant. Because
this was a grave insult to his dead son's reputation, Tamar needed to
be killed with fire. Judah summoned her before him and demanded to know
who the father was. Tamar then produced all the trinkets he had left
behind as collateral. This proved the child was his, so he couldn't
kill her or at least kick her out, as he had hoped.
(It's incredible that evangelicals want to be teaching this story in our schools.)