I was reading my Bible this morning and it covered Genesis 38 – the Judah and Tamar episode. Grab your Bible or go online and read it. It’s bizarre. Most bizarre is that, upon hearing that Tamar is pregnant, he wants her dead. Yet, just a few verses earlier he’s flippant about figuring out how to pay a prostitute (Tamar). He relents in finding her because he doesn’t want to look crazy. He seems more concerned with looking silly than he is concerned about a corrupted soul. His corruption is most pronounced when he seeks to condemn Tamar to death for, not a similar crime, the exact same crime. She was no more immoral than he was. Actually less, as we learn from the context.
Judah was, until he was caught and called on it, oblivious to his sin. As I was journaling, I was wondering how often ‘we’ do this. We easily see and are eager to point out (even if in our own minds) the sins of others while remaining blind to our own. But I had to scratch some stuff out. I put an ‘X’ over the ‘we’ and started writing ‘I.’ That generalization is part of the problem. I need to spend more time in self-examination. And much more time in self-examination than in examining others and pointing out their sins – whatever the reason.
Not sure what else to do with this. The hypocrisy of Judah has always been clear, but I’ve never been so confronted with my own in this passage.
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