Genesis 38:27–30
The Bible4Jesus.com Podcast
About this episode
The Bible is not a book for the fainthearted, nor is it a curated collection of stories about nice people who always made good decisions. It is a book about the relentless, sovereign grace of God breaking into a world of sin and chaos. And nowhere is this more apparent than in the sordid and surprising story of Judah and Tamar. We moderns, with our sanitized sensibilities, want our salvation history to be neat and tidy. We want a straight line from Abraham to Jesus, populated by respectable men and women. But God delights in drawing straight lines with crooked sticks. The entire chapter of Genesis 38 is a scandalous interruption. Joseph has just been sold into slavery, and the narrative abruptly shifts to his brother Judah, who departs from his brothers, marries a Canaanite, and gets himself into a tangled mess of deceit, broken promises, and profound sin.