Genesis 38: Shades of Jerry Springer!

Because of its cultural distance from us, Genesis 38 can be a little confusing.  Who is at fault, and why?

Judah's oldest son Er married a woman named Tamar.  Er, the Bible says, was wicked in the sight of the Lord.  (We don't know exactly what Er's sin was, but he was bound to go wrong with a name like Er!)  Whatever the issue, Er was at fault, and he died for his sins.

Because Er died without children, the cultural expectation was that his brother, Onan, would marry his widow Tamar, and that any offspring from their union would be considered to be Er's kids.  Onan, however, had other ideas.  He took Tamar as his wife all right, but he was unwilling to any father children on behalf of his brother.  Because he took advantage of Tamar in this way and interrupted their intercourse to deny her the blessing of children, Onan was at fault, and he died his sins, too.

Judah had now lost two sons due to their sinfulness.  The expectation was that his youngest, Shelah, would now take his brothers' place and father children in their stead.  But since Shelah was still so young, Judah asked Tamar to wait until he was older.

So far, so good.  Yet even when the time came that Shelah was old enough to marry Tamar, Judah resisted.  Perhaps he didn't want to lose a third son.  So Tamar, wronged several times over now, is being treated unjustly by her father-in-law Judah.  While probably none of us would hatch a plan to do what she did (dressing up like a prostitute in order to ensnare her father-in-law and get pregnant), she considered herself justified in order to get Judah to see the error of her ways.

And when Judah realized what had happened, he agreed with her and recognized that he had been at fault.  Instead of killing Tamar as he had first proposed, Judah let her go.  When the time came for her to give birth, she had twins, Perez and Zerah.