It has always puzzled me why in Genesis the story of Judah and Tamar appears in the middle of the story of Joseph. In the book of Genesis, there are several sections that are partitioned by the phrase "These are the generations of ...". As I recall, there's some controversy whether this phrase indicates the end or the beginning of the section. I'm going assume it indicates the beginning of the section. It first appears in 2:4 - "These are the generations of the heaves and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens." The next appearance is in 5:1 - "This is the book of the generations of Adam." Next is 6:9 - "These are the generations of Noah." Next is 10:1 - "These are the generations of the son of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth." Next is 11:10 - "These are the generations of Shem." Next is 11:27 - "These are the generations of Terah." Next is 25:12 - "These are the generations of Ishmael, Abraham's son, whom Hagar the Egyptian, Sarah's servant, gore to Abraham." Next is 25:19 - "These are the generations of Isaac, Abraham's son." Next is 36:1 - "These are the generations of Esau (that is, Edom)". This is repeated in 36:9 - "These are the generations of Esau the father of the Edomites in the hill country of Seir." Finally, 37:2 - "These are the generations of Jacob.
Ok..... Still with me? Genesis 37:2 until the end of the book of Genesis is one long section. It is principally the story of Joseph. 37:2 continues: "Joesph, being seventeen years old..." Joseph dreams two dreams, he is sold by his brothers, and winds up in Egypt as a servant to "Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the guard" (37:36). This part of the story is continued not in chapter 38, but in 39: "Now Joseph had been brought down to Egypt, and Potiphar, an officer of PHaraoh, the captain of the guard, an Egyptian, had bought him from the Ishmaelites who had brought him down there." The rest of the book continues to tell the story of Joseph in a very linear fashion. So why does chapter 38 come between 37 and 39? Wouldn't it make sense for 38 to come before 37? That way, the story of Joseph would be completely linear and uninterrupted from beginning to end. And why bother making such a big deal of Judah and Tamar (chapter 38) anyway? It's a weird story, end as abruptly as it began. In the middle of the Joseph story, we are told that "It happened at that time that Judah went down from his brothers and turned aside to a certain Adullamite, whose name was Hirah." While apparently living in the town of Adullam, Judah married "a certain Canaanite whose name was Shua." She bore him three sons: Er, Onan, and Shelah. Judah arranged for the marriage of Er to Tamar, but Er died without children. The custom at the time was for the nearest male relative to marry the dead man's wife. In this case, it was Onan, who also died without children. To make a long story short, Tamar should have then been married to Shelah, but Judah didn't allow it. It seems that Shelah must eventually have married, and Judah's wife died in the meantime, so that now Judah himself was the nearest relative able to marry Tamar. She tricked him into sleeping with her (pretending to be a prostitute, whom Judah did not recognize), and as a result she bore him twin sons: Perez and Zerah. The end. Back to Joseph. Abuptly. What about Perez and Zerah? We don't hear much about them ever again, except in the genealogical records.
What seems to me at this point as the most interesting reference to them is in Ruth 4:11-12: "Then all the people who were at the gate and the elders said, We are witnesses. May the Lord make the woman [Ruth], who is coming into your house, like Rachel and Leah, who together built up the house of ISrael. Mayyou act worthily in Ephrathah and be renowned in Behlehem, and may your house be like the house of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah, because of the offspring that the Lord will give you by this young woman." It seems that the story of Judah and Tamar was well-known, and even viewed favorably, by the people in Ruth's time. But still, why is it in the middle of the Joseph story?
Well, I have an idea now. But first, two more notes about the story: 1) When Judah finds out that Tamar is pregnant, he still doesn't know that he himself is the father, and he says "Bring her out, and let her be burned." Later, under Moses, this punishment was codified specifically for daughters of priests who had prostituted themselves (Leviticus 21:9), in contrast to women who were not daughters of priests and who were stoned (Deuteronomy 22:21) for sexual immorality. Now, Moses was some 400+ years after Judah, but if we assume a similar custom in the time of Judah, the implication is that Tamar was a priest's daughter, or something like that. 2) Before this, when Judah sends a goat to her (still thinking she is a prostitute), his friend can't find her, and asks the people if they have seen "the cult prostitute". Now, we don't know anything about Tamar's father, whether he was a Canaanite priest or not, but the language used in this chapter suggests that we should be thinking of Tamar as if she were a priest's daughter, whether she really was or not. Judah and this pseudo-priest's daughter have two sons in a way reminiscent of Jacob and Esau. Namely, Jacob and Esau were twins, as were Perez and Zerah; both pairs of twins were born with one trying to get out before the other - Jacob was holding on to Esau's heel, and Perez was born first in spite of his brother's hand first coming out. Because Zerah's hand was out first, he was recognized as the firstborn: "This one came out first" (38:28), but Perez became the more important of the two, just as Jacob was more important than Esau.
Ok... Now what about Joseph? I wonder now if Judah and Tamar don't interrupt the story of Joseph in order to serve as a contrast to Joseph. Joseph has been sold to Egypt, yes. The next part of the story involved Joseph refusing to sleep with his master's wife, and eventually being married to a priest's daughter and having two sons. See the parellels? There is another parallel: Joseph was separated from his brothers by being sold into Egypt, and Judah also "went down from his brothers" (38:1). Judah and Joseph both were living away from their brothers, in foreign lands (Joseph among the Egyptians, Judah among the Canaanites. Both of them married foreign women (Judah married the daughter of Shua the Canaanite, Joseph married Asenath the Egyptian). But Judah contrasts with Joseph in his methods. Judah was the one who suggested to sell Joesph into slavery (37:26); Judah left his own brothers of his own will and married a Canaanite, where Joseph left his brothers unwillingly and married an Egyptian; my guess is that Judah was trying to become an important man on his own efforts (there's more to this than just a wild guess, but I won't discuss it here), whereas Joseph became an important man through faith in God; Judah loses his first two sons and has twins in a rather bad way - and in the process, when he can't find Tamar who has his signet and cord and staff (items indicating his importance), he says "Let her keep the things as her own, or we shall be laughed at" (38:23), whereas Joseph has two sons (perhaps even twins???) in an honorable way - and in the process, when he resists the advances of Potiphar's wife, he is accused by her of coming "to laugh at" her (39:14, 17).
As I am working on this entry, I'm thinking about chapters 37 and 38 as a parallel to 39-41. You have, basically, two stories that parallel each other - perhaps the first story is primarily about Judah (as himself, and as the representative of his brothers), and the second story primarily about Joseph. In broad strokes, the first story can be thought of as the following four episodes: 1) Joseph is the favorite in the Jacob's house, 2) Joseph has dreams which Jacob interprets, 3) Joseph is sold into slavery by his brothers (at Judah's suggestion) and his robe is used as proof of his death, 4) Judah departs from his brothers and has twin sons from (presumably) the daughter of a priest. The second story has four parallel episodes: 1) Joseph is prosperous in Potiphar's house, 2) Joseph ends up in prison and his garment is used as proof of his crime, 3) Joseph interprets dreams, and 4) Joseph rises to power and has two sons from the daughter of a prist. (Note that the 2nd and 3rd episodes are in the opposite order in the two stories). Judah meant to profit from selling his brother, and to become a great man by leaving his brothers. In the end, Joseph becomes the great man and Judah, who has become the head of the house of Jacob (except for Jacob himself), must come to him for food. It is Joseph who receives a double portion of the inheritance because Jacob adopts Joseph's two sons - Jacob does not adopt Judah's two sons.
So the book of Genesis from Abraham on is a study of contrasts between two brothers in each generation. In each case, one brother believes the promises made to Abraham while the other does not. First you have Isaac and Ishmael. Ishmael is the older, but he is not the son of the promise. Then you have Jacob and Esau. Esau is the older, but he does not believe in the promises and therefore Jacob recieves the birthright and the blessing. Of Jacob's sons, we have Judah and Joseph in particular. Joseph is the firstborn of Rachel, and Judah is the 4th of Leah. The first three sons of Leah (Reuben, Simeon, Levi) all got themselves into trouble so that Judah is the effective head of the family after Jacob. So, Judah is older than Joseph, but... Like Esau, Judah does not appear to take the promises seriously, whereas Joseph does, and the result is that Joseph receives the blessing and the double portion. And again, each of them has two sons, in which the birth order is not the order of importance - Ephraim is preferred before Mannasseh, and Perez is preferred before Zerah.
Perhaps this helps shed some light on the popularity of the Judah and Tamar story in Ruth. The people seem to consider it a blessing for Ruth to be like Tamar. In fact, Ruth's Israelite family was from the tribe of Judah, so from a Judah-centric perspective this would seem to make great sense - Abraham, Isaach, Jacob, and Judah all had two sons (well, Jacob had 12, but we are representing them as two), and it was through this line that the family was built up.
In the meantime, Joseph is contrasted with Judah in Genesis, and yet it is through Judah (and Tamar) that the line of David is traced, and through David the line of Jesus.
So there we go. Some thoughts about Genesis 38 and how it fits into the general structure of the Joseph story and of the book of Genesis as a whole.
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I definitely agree with the thrust of your argument - in fact I think I have even heard it from more reputable commentators ;) - and I also think you bring some fascinating and pungent observations to the discussion that I had missed.
In addition to setting up a juxtaposition between Judah and Joseph, I also think within the broader sweep of Genesis there has been a systematic disenfranchising of the older brothers (as you pointed out), which the Judah-Tamar account is only the last and perhaps most highlighted example of. This is especially interesting to think about in comparison to Judges... that book has an anti-Benjamin, pro-Judah bent (some think thus elevating the Davidic dynasty over against Saul's Benjamite dynasty)... but Genesis here seems to take an anti-Judah, pro-Joseph tack. Tara did a study on the way Jesus is set up as something of a descendent of Joseph, taking on the messianic imagery associated with Joseph. So it would be interesting to think about Joseph vis a vis Judah in that context. But I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Judah is the brother who ‘doesn’t believe the promises of God…’ because I think part of the point of the Judah thread rests in his dramatic and pivotal offering of his own life for Benjamin at the end of Genesis 44.
I think your observations on the Judah-Joseph parallels are heightened by an exploration of the way the author employs the literary image of clothes/means of adornment as not only an important recurring plot device, but one that mirrors a character’s external trajectory and to certain extent his internal moral choices. So we see that Joseph is given a beautiful coat (37:3), has that same coat stripped (37:23), said coat is covered with blood (37:31-33), at which Reuben tears his clothes (37:29) and Jacob goes further (37:34) tearing his clothes in grief and donning sackcloth… as a slave his robe is stripped from him by Potiphar’s wife, then used as prominent evidence against him (Genesis 39). When Joseph is brought from prison, the narrative is careful to note (41:14) that he shaves and changes his clothes. And in his exaltation, adornment figures prominently Genesis 41:42 “Then Pharaoh took his signet ring from his hand and put it on Joseph's hand, and clothed him in garments of fine linen and put a gold chain about his neck.” One could even more speculatively argue that the brothers’ lack of recognition is tied in part to Joseph’s regal clothing, although I think the language barrier is more directly alluded to.
In the context of so much weight being placed on adornment, it must be significant that the Judah-Tamar account’s critical plot device is the belt/seal/staff (38:18, 25), which Judah leaves behind in such striking contrast to the way Joseph leaves his garment with Potiphar’s wife. Another contrast is perhaps between Judah losing his own belt/seal/staff, and Joseph gaining Pharaoh’s signet-ring/garments/gold-chain. Clothes again feature prominently elsewhere in Genesis 38: Tamar changes out of (38:14) and into (38:19) her widow’s robe, so covering herself for a time (38:14, 18).
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