Nancy Dawson
The scepter will not depart from the tribe of Judah, and he becomes the Lion of Judah. And so, it’s a great fulfillment. It’s like a recap of all of Old Testament history and all those covenant promises coming to fulfillment. And we see it even in the way he starts. He starts with Abraham, and then works in an ascending order to Jesus, past to present.
David Capes
And that’s a part of the beauty of this particular genealogy, because it ties everything together. He’s the son of Abraham, fulfilling the Abrahamic covenant, fulfilling the Davidic covenant. And now, I think there are scholars that would say, Jesus is the remedy of exile as well. He’s the one who brings us ultimately out of exile.
Nancy Dawson
And that is the close of the Old Testament with the Chronicles. What you see is this Second Temple period is an extended time. They go into exile in 586 BC. Some of them coming back with Zerubbabel in 538 BC, then with Ezra, and then with Nehemiah in 445 BC Then you have this long period of waiting. It’s like a pregnant pause, if you will. And then things break forth with this announcement to Mary. But these women in Matthew’s genealogy lead up to her, and their stories, their narratives are a way of describing what is really taking place with Mary and how you should view her virgin pregnancy, where the Holy Spirit comes upon her.
But how would people around her have viewed this situation? There’s an aura of impropriety, of real social stigma. Amy Peeler wrote a book on Mary and the gender of God, and writing on the Magnificat. Mary is the person that says, “Let this be unto me as you have said”. And the angel is saying, you are highly favored among women. You have been chosen. And she accepts this role for herself and she has the great support of Joseph. What’s unusual in the genealogies is that both Matthew and Luke, will document the genealogy of Jesus, not through Mary, but through Joseph, Jesus’s earthly father. And
this is a curious moment. It’s like, wow how can that be. But that is how Matthew traces it.
David Capes
Let’s look at these women. Start with Tamar because it says there that Judah was the father of Perez and Zara, whose mother was Tamar.
Nancy Dawson
Yes. We’re finding this story back in the patriarchal days with Judah, who is Jacob’s fourth son. Judah has three sons, Er, Onan and Shelah. And Judah chooses Tamar. She seems to be either a Canaanite or a proselyte, but she’s not an Israelite. She marries Er but he is wicked, and God kills him. According to the laws of levirate marriage that are described in Deuteronomy, Judah gives the second son Onan to Tamar to raise up a son for the deceased Er. But Onan, again is a wicked son of Judah, and he spills the seed. He denies her the chance to be a mother to carry on the name of the deceased.
David Capes
That was the way the law was to work, right?
Nancy Dawson
Yes, and that was to protect the widow, but also the family, so that the property stayed within the tribe, the clan and that family. And it was also to carry on the name of the deceased. This was such a tragedy. Shelah the third son is too young. He’s not of marriageable age. So, Judah tells Tamar, go back to your father’s house, and when he becomes of age, I will give him to you. Well years past. Maybe five or ten years pass and she realizes that Shelah is grown, and Judah, the patriarch, has no intention of giving her, her husband, so that she can have children by him.
She’s in this very weird place. She’s in a bad, desperate situation, and what she does is she devises this very unprecedented counter cultural plan by which she will assume the lever, the male lover. She is going to act as the deceased brother’s widow, and she is going to have children with Judah. Now, part of this plan is that she dresses up as a prostitute. She veils herself and she goes to a place where Judah is doing the sheep shearing at Timnah. She is at a fork in the road, but it’s not just any place. She knows that Judah, who is now a widower himself, because his wife, the daughter of Shuah, has died.
And he says I’m interested in sleeping with this prostitute, and he promises her a goat kid. Now he doesn’t have the goat with him. So, she says, okay, to be certain that you are going to do this, I would like for you to give me a pledge, a surety pledge. She asked for his staff, and also the cylinder seal that has his name on it. It’s put through a cord and wrapped around his neck. And he says, okay I will do that. In fact, he does not realize it’s his daughter-in-law, Tamar. And he sleeps with her. Three months go by and she becomes pregnant, and he thinks that she has committed prostitution, and brought shame to the family.
He wants her to be burned to death. This is not what will become the Levitical laws, where the adulterer and the adulteress are put to death, but more like where a priest daughter commits adultery and she is burned. He has the force of the developing law against her. And so, she sends messengers to him, and says, okay, well this is the paternity test. Whoever is the owner of these things, that is the father. As soon as he sees that, he confesses, “you have been more righteous than I have, because I did not give you Shelah as I had promised”.
And in this way she bears children. She bears not one son, but two. And those two sons are Perez and Zerah, and they’re twins, just like Isaac and Rebecca have twins, Jacob and Esau. It’s going to be through Perez. He was a breach child. And this is the breaking forth of this whole line of the ancestry of the Messiah. She is the one that ensures the succession of the line of Judah. And I call her the ancestress of the ancestresses, because of her important role.
That child, Perez will have a son named Hezron. And that clan is so important in the rest of the story of the tribe of Judah. It brings forth the judge of Israel, Jair. She becomes the ancestress of Elisheba, who is the wife of Aaron, the high priest. And in this sense, she’s the ancestress of the high priesthood, the mother of the high priesthood. She becomes the mother of the Bethlehemites. She becomes the mother of kings. She becomes the mother of a group of scribes, including, probably the Chronicler. Also, another scribe named Jabez, who is going to be so instrumental. Maybe some of your listeners have read the Prayer of Jabez. That guy is one of the offspring of Tamar-Perez-Hezron clan. And he settles a scribal community, and they are the keepers of the scrolls during the time of the divided monarchy, much like we think of Qumran being this important scribal clan. And so, Tamar breaks through. She is the breach that allows the continuation of this line. She’s just a phenomenal person.
David Capes
And you know, her story seems to be buried back in the Old Testament, and that’s not really a place we spend a lot of time reading. A lot of folks look at the genealogies, and they say, I’m going to skip over that because I don’t know any of these people. But you know these people. You’ve studied them. You’ve gone down deep into their histories, both who they are, where they’ve come from, but also the children, the family that they become. Nancy, this is a fascinating story. Thank you for being with us today on The Stone Chapel Podcast.
Nancy Dawson
Thank you.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
