Great Expectation Adjustments

A story that still makes me laugh is the time Tim and I were invited to a friend's house for a visit, and -- as we understood -- dessert. We made a date night of it. After we both got off of work, we went to our favorite pizza place, ordered a large pepperoni, and made short work of it. After three slices, I was feeling quite satisfied, and Tim had eaten most of the rest of the pizza, so I knew he was full as well. I wanted to make sure we saved room for the dessert our host would provide us, so we got in the car and drove to our friend's house for our visit.

Do you see where this is going? Of course you do. When we entered our friend's house, she had a beautiful array of food on her table, really quite the feast.

Tim and I glanced at each other, loosened our mental belts, so to speak, and sat down for (more) food and fellowship. I don't remember how much I ate, but I do remember refusing seconds. 

I'm sure our friend would have understood an explanation and laughed it off, but it was evident that she had gone to quite a bit of trouble, so we quickly adjusted our expectations to meet the reality that presented itself. In that situation, it was very evident what needed to be done. We'd made a mistake by not clarifying expectations, and we had to swiftly change directions when that mistake became clear.

Joseph's story gets put on hold for just a moment in Genesis 38, and we are treated to a sidetrack into Judah's story for the space of a chapter. Judah has been mentioned once or twice in lists of Jacob's sons, but really has had no stage presence of his own until now.

In the last chapter, Judah and his brothers have put Joseph on a camel caravan heading to Egypt and have taken part in the great deceit he and his brothers originate when they tell their father that Joseph has been killed by a wild animal. 

Now in this chapter, Judah leaves home to seek his fortune, the beginning of any good fairy tale, right? This tale is a bit sordid, though. Judah stays with his friend Hirah, and while there, he falls in love with a girl whose name we never learn. Naturally, he marries her.

Unnaturally, he is the son of Israel, son of the promise, son of the covenant, and he intermarries with the Canaanites. His departure from his family seems more than simply physical distance at this point; it has become symbolic, as well.

Judah and his wife have three bouncing baby boys, not all at once. Judah names the oldest Er, the second Onan, and the third, who apparently came several years after his older two brothers, Shelah. 

As was the custom, when Er and Onan had grown up, Judah had to start finding wives for his sons. Shelah was still a young boy, so that wasn't a concern yet. So Judah looked around and found a young woman named Tamar, whom he arranged for Er to marry.

Pause: in case it's not clear, my name is Tamara. Tamar is the root of my name, and both our names -- Tamar and Tamara -- hold the same meaning: palm tree. I've written about my name meaning before, but I'll reiterate it here. I never liked the meaning as a young girl. I looked around at my friends who had really cool name meanings: princess or woodland clearing or star of the sea. 

Mine meant palm tree, and I felt cheated. What kind of meaning is palm tree?! I disliked the name and its meaning right up until a friend reminded me that palm trees are the last trees to fall in a storm. The wind may whip around them, but their supple wood allows them to bend and sway with the wind without breaking off in the strongest hurricanes. Steven Curtis Chapman's song Bring It On has been running through my head this morning: 

Bring it on!
Let the lightning flash, let the thunder roll, let the storm winds blow!
Bring it on!
Let the trouble come, let the hard rain fall, let it make me strong!
Bring it on.

Tamar, as we see, is an example of a woman who grits her teeth against the stormy winds, puts her head down against the rain, leans into the storm, and walks through it. Against impossible circumstances, she roots herself against the battering waves, and she survives.

Back to the story. Genesis 38:6 says: "Judah got a wife for Er, his firstborn, and her name was Tamar. But Er, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the Lord's sight, so the Lord put him to death."

"Judah's firstborn," is stated twice for emphasis. Birth order comes into play yet again. We see some of the customs of the day in this story. Er is the inheritor of the estate, the one who gains his father's wealth.

What happens to him? He dies as a result of his wickedness. So, Er's brother Onan, according to the customs of that time period and that culture, steps in to marry Tamar. This is part of the Levirate law, one of the ordinances listed in Deuteronomy 25:5-6. The entire point of this practice is to produce an heir for the head of the family, in this case: Judah. Er has died without an heir to pass down Judah's inheritance, so now it's Onan's responsibility.

According to the Levirate law, Onan could have refused to marry his dead brother's wife, but if he so chose that course, Tamar could have spit in his face in the presence of the city elders and taken one of the sandals off his feet. Any children Onan would have produced, then, with anyone else would have become known as The Family of the Unsandaled (you can't make this stuff up). What a disgrace! Far be it from Onan to face such a blemish.

So he agrees to his father's request and sleeps with Tamar, per expectation. The Scriptures pull no punches here; they describe Onan's birth control method quite clearly. Since the whole point of Onan's coupling with Tamar is to produce an heir for Judah's line to carry on, this birth control method was an abominable act. Genesis 38:10 says: "[The birth control method he employed] was wicked in the Lord's sight; so He put him to death also."

Poor Judah is down to one son, Shelah, who is still a young boy, too young for marriage to his older sister-in-law Tamar.

The Levirate law is still in place, so Judah tells Tamar to move back home with her parents until Shelah grows old enough to be able to take a wife. It seems that Judah now considers Tamar a bad luck charm. In Genesis 38:11, after he tells her to go back home, he thinks: "[Shelah] may die, too, just like his brothers." Tamar has managed to kill off his first and second-born; there's no way he's going to risk his last son on her, too.

Deception. It's a theme that carries through Jacob and into his sons - with the notable exception of Joseph, as we'll see in the next chapter.

Time passes, Shelah grows up, and Tamar realizes that Judah has no intention of fulfilling the requirements of the Levirate law. In that time, in order to survive, a woman had to have a husband and produce an heir. If she was barren, it was considered a curse; if she had no husband, she was destitute. Pure survival demands that Tamar step out, find her autonomy, forge her own future out of an impossible circumstance. So she takes the single option she has.

She removes her widow's reeds and dresses as a prostitute -- that is, she covers her face with a veil -- and she goes to sit by the entrance to Enaim, where she knows her father-in-law Judah will be that evening.

Once again, culture and custom come into play. A man taking a prostitute for a night is a common occurrence at the end of a journey, so however Tamar finagles the situation, she gets herself noticed by Judah, and he approaches her and asks for her services.

She agrees on the condition that he give her something until he can pay her with the young goat he promises her. So he gives her his seal (a cylinder that is uniquely his that hangs around his neck and that he uses to seal any written communication) and his walking staff.

And they go do the deed. 

He leaves his seal and staff with her and goes on his way. He gets the young goat he's promised her and sends it with a friend "to the shrine prostitute who sits beside the road at Enaim."

Naturally, Tamar is nowhere to be found, having gone back to her father's house and put on her widow's reeds again. The plot thickens.

Three months later, Judah is told that his daughter-in-law Tamar is pregnant, that she has prostituted herself. The consequence of prostitution is burning alive, and so Judah tells the men to bring her out so she can pay the consequences.

Judah's double-standard (utilizer of prostitution; burn the prostitute at the stake!) is typical of the day, but it's still hard to swallow.

Tamar pulls out her ace in the hole. As the men are taking her from her home, she sends a message back to Judah. In Genesis 38:25, she says: "I am pregnant by the man who owns these. See if you recognize whose seal and cord and staff these are."

The realization that sweeps over Judah must have hit him like a lightning bolt. And then, he does something incredibly uncultural and uncustomary. 

He publicly apologizes. Men just... didn't do that, certainly not in the wider world around them.

"She is more righteous than I, since I wouldn't give her to my son Shelah." Culture expected him to react; they did not expect an apology and the appropriate follow-through to be his reaction.

Happy-ish endings ensue for Tamar: she does not get burned at the stake. She carries her pregnancy to full-term and gives birth to twins. During the birthing process, one of the twins sticks out his hand, and the midwife ties a scarlet thread around it. But the baby pulls back, and his brother is born first. Tamar names him Perez, meaning: breaking out - quite the parallel to his mother's story, who through her grit and determination, breaks out of her fate by the only method she knows to do. Perez pushes ahead of his brother Zerah (meaning scarlet, because of the red thread, likely), and becomes the firstborn, the inheritor of the line of Judah, the line of King David, the line of Jesus, the Son of God.

Tamar, in the Matthew 1 genealogy, is only one of five notable women listed in the 42 generations between Abraham and Jesus. Each of these women in Matthew 1 overcome some incredible odds to hold their named place in history. Tamar's palm tree has rooted deeply, and has endured until the end.

This is a bizarre story, but one thing is clear: the expectations throughout the chapter take mind-bending turns. Tamar expects her rights, and with horrifying realization, she finds that Judah withholds those rights.

Judah expects a normal prostitution payment story, and with horrifying realization, he finds that he himself has impregnated his daughter-in-law.

Society expects a burning-at-the-stake, another example of male dominance, another example of female oppression. Instead, Judah... apologizes. 

His story takes a hard right. 

I was thinking about my expectations of God this morning. I've got a lot of them, but I wonder -- in my view of those expectations, am I missing how He brings those things about? I mean, really, how often do we raise our gaze to the skies and demand of God: You were supposed to fix this!

How often does God send His answers in ways that come out of left field? 

Once again, the Lord has reminded me of Isaiah 55:9: "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts."

God is working, He is doing great things -- for me, for us! But when we hold so firmly to our ideas of how we think God should carry out His plans...

We totally miss the incredible ways He fulfills His promises. 

Psalm 46:10 reminds us to "be still and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted in the earth."

Psalm 47:8 reminds us that "God reigns over the nations; God is seated on His holy throne."

He never left, He never abdicated His position on that royal chair. The nations dissolve in chaotic sinful choices, but God reigns supreme, and if our expectations are that God will exalt Himself in a certain way, and God brings this about another way... we miss the complete perfection of His work.

Don't miss out. Keep your eyes open, your ears listening. Adjust your expectations to fit what God is doing.