18 September 2022 draft-bible
1. Now at this time. In other words, it is after Joseph, seventeen years old, is sold into slavery, that Judah leaves his brothers and goes to Hirah the Adullamite. While Genesis 37-50 are mostly concerned with the story of Joseph, this story of Judah is inserted here and is chronologically difficult to imagine. Consider that this entire story takes place in the land of Canaan, and so must take place when Joseph is between 17 and 39 years old – within an interval of no more than 22 years. In that period, Judah leaves his brothers, goes to live with an Adullamite, marries a Canaanite woman, has three sons with her, sees two grow to adulthood, sees the oldest marry and die, sees the second die, waits while a third grows up, delays in marrying his third son long enough that the widow of his eldest son becomes convinced she will not marry the third, impregnates his daughter-in-law, and finally has twin sons by her.
2. went down. According to Driver, this going down is “From the high central ground of Canaan (Hebron? Xxxvii. 14) to ʿAdullam (Jos. xv. 35) in the Shephēlah, or ‘lowland’ (Jos. xv. 33-44: see DB. III. 893 f.); now probably ʿAid el-má, 17 m. SW of Jerusalem (HG. 229).” ABD treats Adullam as being unconstroversially identified with Tell esh Sheikh Madhkur (Hamilton, “Adullam”). The two sites are, if I understand the situation correctly, a few hundred meters from each other, and so it makes little difference which is considered Adullam, or indeed if both are considered a part of Adullam.
3. stayed with. Or, “pitched his tent near”. The WEB reads “visited”, which could leave the impression of a short visit, but the following story seems to indicate that Judah’s departure into Canaanite society lasted for at least two decades. The NHEB corrects “visited” to “stayed with”, which I think is an improvement.
8. perform the duty. The Hebrew verb is YBM, which has no precise English equivalent, as it refers specifically to the act of impregnating the widow of one’s brother, with the aim that the resulting child would take on the legal rights and responsibilities of being the dead brother’s heir. The resulting child, crucially for the plot of the story to follow, is not treated as belonging to the biological father, but to the fictive deceased father.
9. This verse plays on the dual meaning of ‘seed’ as referring both to descendants and semen. The WEB’s rendering is quite a bit more explicit than the Hebrew text.
12. After many days. The text reads, literally, And the days were multiplied, and … The ASV reads this as a vague unspecified expanse of time – “And in process of time”. The NHEB agrees, reading “After some time”. In any case, whatever the idiom might normally mean, it would appear in this case to refer to a span of several years. In verse 11, we read that Shelah is not “grown up” to a marriageable age, but now, “After many days”, we see that Tamar takes a desperate new approach, seeing that Shelah has “grown up” and it appears that Judah is still stalling to avoid giving Tamar the levirate marriage to Shelah that he has promised. It is hard to imagine a span of less than a few years being intended here.
12. And Judah was comforted. Another interpretation is that the verb “comforted” refers not to Judah’s emotional state, but simply to the ending of the traditional mourning period (see Alter, Driver).
12. Timnah. According to ABD (Kotter, “Timnah”), the exact location referred to in this passage is unclear.
21, 22. prostitute. The term in verse 15 translated as “prostitute” is the Hebrew zonah, which unconstroversially refers to a woman engaged in prostitution. However, in verse 21, the word is qedešah, a more controversial term. For some reason, the narrator tells us that Judah thinks he is dealing with a zonah, a woman engaged in prostitution, but when Judah, the Adullamite, and the local men discuss her later, they all use the term qedešah. The term qedešah, evidently taken from the root QDŠ, denoting things sacred, has been historically often interpreted as “cult prostitute” or the like – the idea being that prostitution was a part of Canaanite and Israelite worship in some times and places. However, Joan Goodnick Westenholz contested the idea that sacred prostitution existed in the Bible in a 1989 article in the Harvard Theological Review: “Tamar, Qĕdēšā, Qadištu, and Sacred Prostitution in Mesopotamia". Cline’s Dictionary of Classical Hebrew (1993-2011, QDŠH) considers the cult prostitution interpretation outdated. Westenholz’s view has apparently not entirely swept the field, however, as the NRSVUE, of 2021, continues to read “prostitute” in this verse.
29. Perez. Meaning, “breaking out”.
30. Zerah. The notes to the WEB claim that the name means “scarlet” or “brightness”, but I don’t think this is true. ABD suggests that the name means either “dusk” or is related to the verb “to rise” (as the sun).
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