Tamar, Yehuda's daughter in law, was married to Er. Hashem kills Er because he was evil. Er's brother, Onan, also gets killed because he was evil as well. Instead of remarrying, Tamar stayed a widow so that she won't look bad in the eyes of her son. Then Yehuda's wife dies. Yehuda thinks that Tamar is "not a shomer girl", or prostitute in real words. After all of this Yehuda promises to give her sheep. When he does though, he does not actually have the sheep to give to her. Instead he gives her his coat, staff, and ring. Later on when she got pregnant. Everyone is mad at her. In addition to everyone else, Yehudah wanted to burn him. Little did he know that it was his child. One night, being very "not shomer", they slept together. After she even proved he slept with him by showing that she had his belongings, he still wanted to kill her. He had her burnt.
I'm sorry, but to me this story is insane! And it came out of nowhere. I personally feel like this story was dropped in the middle of a completely different story. Also...this is so cruel! That's all I got out my feelings on this matter :)
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Sad times for Tamar!
I totally agree with you. This story is a mess of a situation in the middle of a completely irrelevant story. Honestly, what's the point of telling us about poor Tamar's horrible time with men? This does tell us a lot about Yehuda's character though. He was very impulsive, as we saw when he slept with her. He was a widower and she was a widow. This whole situation is so beyond inappropriate, so I'm not exactly sure how to react. There is definitely something to learn from this though. I guess we'll find that out in class when we go though character development.
ReplyDeleteNice and appropriate picture by the way!
Ok, so first of all, that's a sad lookin baby for a not-as-sad-as-you-described it story. After Yehuda realized that she was the 'harlot' that he slept with, he actually said that she was more righteous than him. The pesukim go on to tell us that she gave birth to twins and he named them Perez and Zerah, so he couldn't have killed her. He did want to burn her once he found out she was pregnant when she was supposed to be waiting to marry his son, but when he realizes she is pregnant with his sons, he does not want to kill her.
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