Tamar was the granddaughter of Noah and daughter of Shem. She married the fist-born son of Judah, Er, and the Lord was unpleased by him and he was killed, then she married Onan, his brother to have off springs for his dead brother. Onan did not want to give the off spring because he knew it would not be considered his, but it would give credit to Er, so the Lord sent to kill him. After both brothers died, there was only one left Shelah, Judah told Tamar it would be better if she went to live with her father until shelah was mature and grown, so that she can marry him and have an offspring, Tamar was not sure of how mature shelah was going to become and when she met at Timmath she saw Shelaw, but she law did not want to marry her. Then she began having relations with her father-in-law, Judah. As a form of payment Judah left Tamar with his staff, seal and belt. She got pregnant, but did not give the name of the child’s father, and then she was accused of fornicating. She had to state that she was carrying the children of the man she belonged to. She gave birth to Zerah and Perez. She was sent to be burned for the bad actions she had done, but she only did what she had to claim what was rightfully hers.
Tamar was the first women mentioned in Jesus’ genealogy. She was mentioned to be the mother of Zerah and Perez, but that was not the interesting part of it, the most meaningful part of her story was how she got those children. She wanted something and she went out and got it. Jesus wanted to teach how when you know you deserve something and you go out for it, it is going to come to you if you truly deserved it. I think that by using Tamar in his genealogy, he was his followers to know about her and her struggles, that she had going husband after husband just to get an off spring. It shows character as well as emotions that Tamar at time felt unworthy, especially when Shelah did not want to marry her, and with the Jewish thinking of if God does not send a woman a child she is unworthy and disgraceful. Showing those emotions demonstrate a different side of humans, it shows what makes us human, which are our emotions and our ability to think about what is going on around us. Tamar was able to thinking of what was going on around her and was able to come up with a solution to get what belonged to her.
Resources I used:
womeninthebible.net
jewishencyclopedia.com
Genesis 38: 6-19
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Hey Lesley,
I think that you did a great job in the last paragraph explaining why Jesus would use her in his teachings. However when you were telling the story I felt that you were making Judah seem nice when he kicked her out when really it was a big deal and it would have been better to tell us more about why he really kicked her out. I also think that you should add more details to the prostitute story to clear it up a bit. For the most part your last paragraph was good, but maybe you should use more examples instead of just Tamar going after something that was her. The example is really good but maybe include another one.
Good Job!
Jamie Howe
Post a Comment