The Worst Son

When the newcomer to the Bible senses an interruption into the new Joseph story with our chapter here—Genesis 38:1-30—that is perfectly understandable; but when a critical so-called “scholar” camps out here, then he betrays himself.1 It’s a very fitting interruption. Why? In the first place, there has been an upsetting of the natural birth order going on since Genesis 16 in each generation. One way or another, for it to happen again in this fourth generation would follow the pattern. The only question is how to explain it. In the previous generations, there were two sons to reverse. Now there are twelve.

So the idea that a chapter would pop up to give more clues is not terribly surprising to the student of Scripture that has been paying attention. Now why does Judah get this full chapter? He is the fourth, so (not to spoil things, but) he gets the inheritance rather than three who were older, each of whom will be disqualified. So, if this chapter is meant to give more background for that, then I wonder what great deed this Judah will accomplish to earn that!

It’s not anything good. Not only is it bad—it’s the worst. And like so much of Scripture’s bad examples, this is meant to teach us something about the worst in us:

• The worst in us pollutes the present.

• The worst in us kills our future.

• The worst in us lays a snare for ourselves.

Doctrine. The worst in us is no match for the grace of God.

The worst in us pollutes the present.

The first thing about sin to note here is that it always gets worse. Note two things in the first verse: He ‘went down from his brothers’ (v. 1a)—already a condemned bunch, but he reached a newer, even lower, low than them—and he ‘turned aside’ (v. 1b): a common biblical expression for veering from the path of righteousness—“Take care lest your heart be deceived, and you turn aside and serve other gods and worship them” (Deut. 11:6). Sin is never static or neutral. It always expands if left to itself. Sin becomes an ever-widening path before us to turn aside, to reach new lows.

The second thing to note here about sin is that it is attracted to darkness. ‘There Judah saw the daughter of a certain Canaanite whose name was Shua’ (v. 2). Canaanite. That is the antithesis. Sin cannot wait to marry the devil’s daughters. Sin falls in love with the world, as Paul lamented the defection of his ministry partner, “Demas [who], in love with this present world, has deserted me” (2 Tim. 4:10). This woman for Judah remains nameless. What matters in the two times she is mentioned is the description: “daughter of a Canaanite.”

The third thing to note about sin here is that this spreading is a personal spreading. The first son, Er, was so much worse than his father Judah that God ‘put him to death’ (v. 7). Sin is a spiritual contagion. But Judah resolved to contain it with externals. He had enough of the precursor to the moral law to say to his second son,

“Onan, ‘Go in to your brother’s wife and perform the duty of a brother-in-law to her, and raise up offspring for your brother” (v. 8).

Once again, we see another example in Genesis of the substance of the moral law existing prior to Sinai. While the specific practice is called the Levirate marriage, part of Israel’s civil law (cf. Deut. 25:5-6)—so the specific practice is not moral law, but rather the care of one’s family line. However, the obligation was obviously taught already among the patriarchs, as Judah here calls it “the duty” in such a way that it was common knowledge that the offspring of elder sons takes precedence over that of younger sons.

By “polluting the present” I mean that sin contaminates everyone around us and even everything in our field of vision. We stop caring about others. And that brings us to the second thing we stop caring about.

The worst in us kills our future.

This is obvious about sin when we stop and think about it—except that, when we’re sinning, we’re not stopping to think about it … we run with reckless abandon away from the future of consequences.

This second son Onan was well on his way to becoming worse than father and first son, and God had no more mercy on him than on the first. I read the King James Version of the entire text for the sake of modesty, but I will mention only what the sin of the heart is here. There are a number of ways that Onan could have showed his contempt for God, for his father, for his older brother, and for Tamar. But he chose to try to conceal this, and, one would think, threaten her if she told anyone. Whether you are focused on the more awkward and obviously shameful sin here, back behind that is a root covetousness and idolatry that puts one’s own immediate life over the bigger picture of why God placed us here. Onan cares nothing for the family line, but where did he learn that from? His father Judah.

When sin turns us aside, it is blind to what this means for the future. All it sees is the immediate payoff, and it treats everything else and everyone else with contempt.

But the next words shift back to Judah’s sinfulness. When it adds in the narrative,

“Then Judah said to Tamar his daughter-in-law, ‘Remain a widow in your father’s house, till Shelah my son grows up’—for he feared that he would die, like his brothers. So Tamar went and remained in her father’s house” (v. 11).

These details set the stage for another of his sins that will be revealed later on. He just stopped caring about his line altogether. We know this because of the detail a few verses down: ‘For she saw that Shelah was grown up, and she had not been given to him in marriage’ (v. 14).

Judah’s fear is mentioned for the third son; but what about his concern for Tamar? Matthew Henry even suggests Judah may have blamed her for the death of the two first sons. If he feared that the third son would die in the same way that the first two did, why did it not occur to him to ask why the two sons died and whether he might do things differently with the third? Getting right with God was nowhere in his sight.

So it is with the worst in us. When we look back on the wreckage of our sin, our natural tendency is not to take serious inventory of our sin. Our natural tendency is to do damage control, to save face, and to reshuffle the deck of our current resources to see if they’ll survive the next storm—ignoring that the living God is that storm, and that His holiness and our sin are the great contrast here.   

The worst in us lays a snare for ourselves.

The details of her disguise in verse 14 also tells us that she would know that Judah was easy pickings, which tells us that he wore his immorality on his sleeve. She was strategic. Even though he initiated, she had a plan ready that would have been hatched regardless of his words: ‘She replied, ‘Your signet and your cord and your staff that is in your hand’ (v. 18). So, “the wicked are snared in the work of their own hands” (Ps. 9:16).

Here again, we see Judah care more about what he looks like before men than before God—‘Judah replied, ‘Let her keep the things as her own, or we shall be laughed at’ (v. 23).

What follows, in Judah’s response, has the same ring as David’s indignation at the man in the story that the prophet Nathan told him (cf. 2 Sam. 12:5, 7), and it ends the same way as “the gallows that Haman has prepared for Mordecai” (Esther 7:9). So it is here,

About three months later Judah was told, “Tamar your daughter-in-law has been immoral. Moreover, she is pregnant by immorality.” And Judah said, “Bring her out, and let her be burned” (v. 24).

So it is when we mix our original sin with hypocritical judgment of others.

“Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things” (Rom. 2:1).

The Jewish leaders even miss this irony when they accused Jesus in John 8:41 of being born from immorality. In fact, the whole people group, that is, the surviving tribe of Judahites, had been born out of this very instance of sexual immorality.

It would seem that God is not just reversing the natural birth order, as he did in generations two and three. Now He is reversing the expected moral order, in upholding Judah—not as obtaining the inheritance because of his great virtue, but as obtaining the inheritance in spite of his disgrace.

Practical Use of the Doctrine

Use 1. Instruction. Chapter 37 was the obvious part of the explanation of how they would wind up in Egypt; but here in Chapter 38, we have a second, less obvious, more personal, kind of explanation. The trek down to Egypt would be a real blessing in disguise. Boice explains,

“In Canaan the descendants of Abraham were inter-marrying with the people of the land and were therefore in danger of being entirely swallowed up by Canaan’s culture.”2

It happens in our lives that God’s grace intervening into some shameful situation, or even bringing out of tragedy or senseless waste, one day we will see that God was sparing us or are family complete annihilation.

Use 2. Instruction. The divine choice of Judah is just like his previous choices, but it is more pronounced here. Like the thief on the cross, or like Matthew the traitor to his nation, or like Paul the Christian-killer, and so on—with this worst of the sons, we are faced with Paul’s words,

“But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God” (1 Cor. 1:27-30).

Or, with Jesus’s words, at the end of the parable of the landowner and workers:

“Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?’ So the last will be first, and the first last” (Mat. 20:15-16).

In other words, be in wonder of God’s choice of you.

Use 3. Instruction and Consolation. As this passage ends, there is a cord and a seed. So it would seem that it is a bad seed and a meaningless cord. But that is not so.

When the time of her labor came, there were twins in her womb. And when she was in labor, one put out a hand, and the midwife took and tied a scarlet thread on his hand, saying, “This one came out first.” But as he drew back his hand, behold, his brother came out (vv. 27-29).

A scarlet cord, of course being the color of blood. Centuries later, another scarlet cord would hold the future of Israel by thread, as they were delivered from the inhabitants of Jericho. And this cord would be draped down for the rescue of their spies by another outside, who also happened to be a prostitute: Rahab.

“Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, and Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar, and Perez the father of Hezron… and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of David the king” (Mat. 1:2-3, 5-6).

Matthew’s purposes in this genealogy was to show the physical seed that they were not the true heirs of the kingdom simply because they had descended by blood from Abraham through Judah and through David. But God was still reversing the natural birth order through election.

Now one more detail from Genesis 38: The son who concealed himself and then came out holding the scarlet cord—they called him Zerach (זרח). If it had been the soft-breathing Hebrew letter hey (ה), the word would be Zerah, which means seed. Was it an instance of word play? I don’t know. At any rate, Perez would take his place; and from him would come the Christ. The one whose name meant “breach”  or “breaking forth” would substitute, or take the place for the bad seed.

Though one’s son may be so lost, that his life seems to dangle by a thread—if that thread is the scarlet cord that runs from God’s promises in eternity and flows from the cross of Christ, then it is an unbreakable thread.

Because the Good Son to come is the best of the best, He is in the business of saving the worst of the worst.

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1. Gerhard von Rad, Genesis (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1962), and E. A. Speiser, Genesis (New York: Doubleday, 1964) were among the worst offenders in supposing that this chapter is of an independent source.

2. Boice, Genesis, III:894.