Day #25 - This post is part of a year-long series where we are reading chronologically through the Bible. Click here to learn more. You are most welcome to join along at any time.
Today's text from the ESV Study Bible: Genesis 38-40.
Today's reading finds Joseph thrown in jail because of the lying wife of Potiphar, who claimed that Joseph made improper moves on her. But what is most shocking to me was the story of Judah and Tamar.
Think about what is happening here:
- Judah goes off and marries a Canaanite woman. This isn't really approved of in the family.
- Judah has three sons by this Canaanite woman.
- Judah selects Tamar to be his first son's wife. The first son is evil, so God kills him leaving no firstborn between he and Tamar.
- Judah tells the second born son to step up and deliver the firstborn heir through sexual relations Tamar. He "wastes his seed on the ground", did something wicked in the eyes of God, and God kills him too.
- Then, Judah, not wanting God to kill his last son, decides to wait until one of his third son's sons grow up, and sends Tamar back to her family until then.
- Fast forward and we find Tamar plotting seduction, and she has intercourse with Judah, bears two sons from her father-in-law, and from this amazingly messed up set of circumstances will come the line of Messiah!
The Apostle Matthew wrote the first of the Gospels in our New Testament. Matthew was a Jew, and one of the main purposes in writing his Gospel was to show the disbelieving Jews that Jesus was the Messiah.
His very first point was to lay out Jesus' genealogy. Look at this from Matthew 1:1-3a:
"The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. 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,..."
Who can begin to fathom the mind of God? Why would he choose to plan the lineage of Messiah so far of course of what we would expect? What's even more incredible is that this will happen several times in the history of redemption.
If we were going to make up this stuff, this isn't the way we would do it? We would make it far more neat and clean. We are going to stand in great shock as we see redemption's story unfold over the generations. God will not let us put him in a box.
Are you shocked by this chapter? Do you see what I mean?
