Articles
FRIENDS IN LOW PLACES (Part III)
Some lose to sorrow. The next recorded funeral was for Judah’s wife (38:12).
Scripture does not reveal how much time past between her sons’ deaths & her
own departure, but having buried two sons, there is little doubt that Judah’s
wife died with a heavy heart.
Some lose to stalling. Judah was in denial, seeming to see his sons’ deaths as
Tamar’s fault instead of the consequence of their own actions (38:11), & as a
result he balked at letting her marry his youngest son, claiming that he would
wait until Shelah was fully grown. Little is known of Shelah beyond this, except
that he later named his son after his wicked older brother Er (1 Chronicles
4:21): not a positive reflection on his character.
Some lose to shame. Tamar saw that Shelah was grown & she was still unwed,
& she became desperate. Learning that Judah was enroute to shear sheep in
Timnath (another low-lying city), she apparently knew her father-in-law well
enough to know that she could receive seed by posing as a harlot in the area,
& so she did, & so it worked (38:12-16). Masked by a vail, she was unrecog-
nizable to him as they haggled over a price & a pledge: the price would be a
kid of the goats, & the pledge would be his ring, signet, & staff (38:17-19).
When he later sent his friend to pay the price & recoup the pledge, the anony-
mous harlot was nowhere to be found, & so Judah concluded, “Let her take it
to her, lest we be shamed” (38:23). He had no idea how shameful his actions
were, not until news came that Tamar was pregnant, & his initial verdict of
death by burning was met with her declaration that the child in her womb was
sired by the owner of this ring, signet, & staff (38:25): his ring, signet, & staff.
He had been shamed, indeed.
Sadly, sometimes shame is exactly what is needed to steer someone away
from low places. Some folks need to hit rock bottom before they look upward.
