An Ethical Realm of Grace
Lessons from Tamar
Trauma – a definition
Trauma is an act of violence that crosses the physical, personal, emotional boundaries of a human being and disables their ability to overcome fear and acquire hope for an ordered life. In an attempt to survive this onslaught on the senses, this lack of trust, a person constructs a self-protective field of isolation. Trauma is the threat of annihilation of the person while they are still alive. Trauma permanently changes a person and its effects outlast the event. Trauma causes confusion because it disrupts a person’s sense of their own humanness and infringes on their emotions through the experience of unwarranted suffering.
Trauma isolates a person from any sense of belonging so that their perception is that they are not the same as others. This positioning of separation makes a trauma victim feel abandoned by God, family, friends, and society. Their experience is like living in the lingering of death’s grip and unable to escape.
The sources of Traumatic violence can be directly from another human being, a group of human beings, from natural catastrophe, or an accident involving human technology. In the gospels, Jesus directs us to two traumatic events one is caused by a person and the other by a failure of technology. (Luke 13:1; Luke 13:4)
We must understand how to apply grace to persons that have suffered trauma or are victims of trauma inflicted upon them by others.
An Ethical Realm for Grace – Reading the story of Tamar
I will discuss Tamar as a scapegoat and trauma victim. Also, I will discuss the Tamar story as a competing story that challenges a legal reading of Deuteronomy as culturally problematic (Deut. 25:5-10). Even suggesting that a woman should be released from the law. I will also discuss the ethical realm of grace that allows a victim of trauma to create a field of righteousness inconsistent with our conceptions of the ethical.
The Right of a Woman to Birth a Child
Learning from Tamar
The Tamar story assaults the sensibilities of dogmatic religion. Is she a whore? Is she a daughter-in-law? Does she have rights or is she the family’s property? Does Judah’s judgment of her trickery as righteous affirm the right of women (if necessary) to seduce men in order to have a child? Her appearance in the lineage of Jesus possibly legitimates her actions, or at the least, attests to the truth of human genealogy; our familial origins are less than ideal.
The story of Tamar is placed within the Joseph story and reflects the failing moral character of Judah. Later, when Judah stands before his brother (Joseph the Egyptian) he will demonstrate a self-sacrificing character. This act of Judah (Gen. 44:33) is in contrast to Reuben who is willing to sacrifice his sons in a foolish vow offered to his father Jacob (Gen. 42:37). Reuben slept with his father’s concubine (Gen. 35:22) and is unable to redeem himself from his moral failure, although he tries (Gen. 37:22).
The seed of Abraham passing through the bloodline of Judah is threatened by Judah’s failure to teach his sons the way of Abraham. Judah’s sons are not allowed to live because they are evil and so the text claims that the LORD oversees their deaths; how they die, or how the LORD is complicit in their deaths is not stated (the view of the writer is a radically monotheistic view that makes the LORD accountable for everything that occurs in life). The sons of Judah are not taking wives, so Judah finds a wife (Tamar) for the eldest son Er; he dies thereafter because he is evil. In accordance with their customs Tamar is passed along to the next eldest brother, Onan. Onan (practicing withdrawal at the moment of ejaculation) refuses to bring any children into the world with Tamar and uses her only to fulfill his sexual desire. Like Er, Onan suffers an untimely death attributed to being the actions of the LORD, and for Onan’s failure to provide a child for Tamar.
Judah’s wife has died and the ongoing lineage of Judah is threatened by extinction (in the text). Judah’s wife is nameless in the story. This failure to name the wife of Judah reflects the oppressive practices of Judah towards women; it also places Tamar as the person to pass on the seed of Judah. Tamar’s role in preserving the seed, the lineage of Abraham through Judah, is more righteous than Judah’s. So, it is her name that is remembered.
Judah, fearing his youngest son Shelah would suffer a similar fate as his brothers, withholds Tamar from bearing a child, and does not give her to Shelah. Tamar, pursuing her right as a woman to bear a child takes matters into her own power. Tamar poses as a prostitute in order to produce a child through the family that has deprived her of her right to bear a child. Judah is prepared to burn her alive upon hearing of her pregnancy. However, Tamar has tricked Judah and the child is his. In effect, she has honored the claim upon her womb by the family of Judah, yet has exposed Judah as an oppressor, an unjust man.
Tamar exhibits traits of courage and wisdom, and through these, she continues the lineage of Judah. Tamar is blessed with two sons (twins) for her refusal to remain barren. Judah declares her righteousness to be superior to his. Perhaps it is implicit within the text that Tamar will be the dominant influence in the lives of her sons. Certainly, her story will impact her sons. I do not think it is intelligible to suggest that Tamar's need for a child is for the child to support her in her old age. She will risk her life and give her strength to rear the child (whether male or female). A woman of Tamar's courage, wisdom, and will is not thinking of personal survival as the impetus for bearing a child.
Is Tamar’s assertion of her desire to bring children into the world regardless of moral implications a suspension of ethical norms for the purpose of establishing justice? Is the right of women to bear children bound only to the confines of society’s accepted norms for marriage and family?
I think the story of Tamar challenges and questions accepted ethics and provides a realm of grace for a victim of abusive and traumatic acts inflicted upon her. I think the story reveals that the desire of women to bear children, even the right of women to fulfill their person through birth and motherhood is not always subject to ethical sexual norms.
In this sense, the Tamar story challenges the governing of women as mere breeding stock for males (Deut. 25:5-10). I think Judah is guilty and Tamar is innocent. With this in mind, a man that engages in sexual activity with a woman outside the commitment of marriage is guilty of wrongdoing, if married he is an adulterer. I’m sure Tamar is not history’s only woman (deprived of her right to bear a child) who has taken advantage of the weakness of men and fulfilled her desire within the confines of a righteousness that is superior to the social constraints and injustices that stop her from fulfilling her childbearing desires.
