Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 08:2 (Spring 1994)
Article: Heroines Of The Faith: A Narrative Essay
Author: Mary LaGrand Bouma

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PP 8:2 (Spring 1994) p. 15

Heroines Of The Faith: A Narrative Essay

Mary LaGrand Bouma

Mary La Grand Bouma is author of Divorce in the Parsonage (Bethany House). Site is a doctoral student at Northern Illinois University, where her emphasis is on biblical influences in literature. She is a member of The Christian Reformed Church.

It was a desperate ploy. If it failed she would be, at best, a social pariah; at worst, burned alive. Probably few of us, either women or men, would be able to summon up the kind of courage Tamar showed when, realizing that the system was failing to give her justice, she decided to do something about it. She used womanly wiles, but not in ways we usually associate with the term.

We read her remarkable story in Genesis 38. She was married to the patriarch Judah’s son Er. This unfortunate young man was “wicked in the sight of the Lord: and the Lord slew him.” At this point Judah did the proper, the just thing according to Hebraic law: He gave her his second son, Onan, for a husband. This fellow, of legendary wickedness, was a scofflaw. Well, not exactly. He pretended to honor the law, but when he “went in to his brother’s wife, he spilled the semen on the ground.” He did not mind having sex with Tamar, but he did not want to impregnate her because the child would be counted as his dead brother’s. God did not approve of this any more than God approved of Er, so Onan died also.

Now Judah had one son left, but Judah was understandably nervous about letting Shelah many Tamar. It did appear that Judah would be tempting fate by giving her his last remaining son — his last hope for carrying on his name. After all, he knew many men who had outlived a couple of wives, but not vice versa. Was Tamar putting arsenic in his sons’ food? Was she hexing them? Judah’s friends probably counseled him to cut his losses: “Law or no law, man, that woman is bad news. Give her a wide berth.”

Women had virtually no legal power in Israel, particularly widows. They were the truly disenfranchised. All Tamar had was her womanliness.. But she didn’t go to Judah and plead, weep, or bat her eyelashes. She didn’t grovel. Instead, she decided to be an actress — to play a role. She, Tamar, Judah’s daughter-in-law, retained her self-respect; her actress persona played the whore.

The narrative continues in a vein which many well-meaning Christians would not allow their children to read it if were not in the Bible. Judah had put Tamar off, after Onan died, by telling her to go back to her father’s house until Shelah grew up. “Don’t call me — I’ll call you.” But when Shelah was grown and she had not heard a word from Judah, she realized what was going on.

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