When his oldest son, Er, was old enough, Judah arranged for his marriage, to a girl named Tamar. The young couple did not live happily after, but we don’t really know why; the text simply tells us that Er “was wicked in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord put him to death” (Genesis 38:7). What was it that Er did that was so bad? And how did this execution take place? The text does not say.

So Judah said to his second son, Onan, “Go in to your brother’s wife and perform the duty of a brother-in-law to her; raise up offspring for your brother” (38:8). This practice, called levirate marriage, would be specifically included in the law, nearly 500 years later (Deuteronomy 25:5-6), and it figures also in the story of Ruth, a couple centuries later still, during the time of the Judges (Ruth 4:1-6). But Onan did not want to father a son for his deceased brother, who would then have a larger share in the inheritance than Onan himself would. This displeased the Lord, who put Onan to death also (Genesis 38:10). And then Judah, who had insisted on levirate marriage, now hesitated, fearing that his third son, Shelah would die, as his brothers had.

So there would be no husband, and no children, for Tamar. But she disguised herself, set up as a prostitute by the side of the road when she knew her father-in-law would be passing by, and conceived a child by him, keeping his signet and staff as a pledge of payment. When he found out that she was pregnant, he was ready to have her burned alive as a whore, but she produced his belongings: and he had to acknowledge that “She is more in the right than I, since I did not give her to my son Shelah” (38:26).

What an awkward story! Why would the Bible want to record events as messy as these? As we’ve seen with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and now with Judah as well, the scriptures do not shy away from showing us the real-life messiness of “the heroes of the faith.” And it will turn out that the ancestry of King David would be traced through Perez, the son of Judah and Tamar.

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We also have sinned, O Lord, like Er and Onan, like Judah and Tamar, like all the long lineage of human sinners. We have not (yet) been struck down for it, and we are grateful. Keep us mindful, we pray, that even in the midst of our worst failures you can still find the way to bring your purpose to fulfillment.