This song and poem is the seventh in the song cycle devoted to women of the Hebrew Scriptures. Tamar, compared to so many other heroic women of the Hebrew Scriptures, is an unlikely heroine. Given the circumstances in which she lived, however, she is ingenious in using the means available to her to not only assure security for herself, but an important place in Salvation History.
THE STORY OF TAMAR (Genesis 38)
Judah had three sons, Er, Onan, and Shelah. Judah provided a wife for his first born son, Er. Her name was Tamar. All we know of Er, is that he was wicked in the eyes of God, and God killed him. As was the custom, to assure Tamar a place in the family, she was given to Onan, who was to act as a Levir, or surrogate for his dead brother, Er. However, because if he fathered a son with Tamar, Onan would not his receive the full share of his inheritance, when he has sexual relations with Tamar, he spills his semen on the ground. This act displeased God so greatly, that God kills Onan. Because Judah feared that Tamar was cursed and anyone marrying her was doomed to die, he did not want his youngest son to marry her. Judah ordered her to return to her father and remain chaste and a widow, never to ever remarry.
Tamar condemned to this Limbo and not free to marry, decides to take action that would assure her security in the family of Judah. She decides to disguise herself as a prostitute and have sexual relations with Judah. Placing a veil over her face, she sits and waits for him at the city gate. Judah, returning from the sheep-shearing festival, coins in his pocket, drunk and randy is an easy mark for Tamar. He promises her a kid from his flock if she would have sexual relations with him. She agrees if she can have his staff and seal to keep until she receives payment. They have sexual relations, with Judah leaving his staff and seal with her. When he sends his servant back to the city to give her the kid and retrieve his staff and seal, she has vanished.
In the meantime, Tamar’s relations with Judah has resulted in a pregnancy. After three months, people report to Judah that Tamar is 3 months pregnant and has disobeyed his order to remain chaste, a crime that is punishable by death. Judah orders that she be brought to him and be burned at the stake. Tamar appears before him and presents to Judah his staff and seal. Judah recognizes that he is the father of the child she is carrying. He receives Tamar back into his household, assuring her security for the rest of her life. She gives birth to twins, Perez and Zerah. Because Judah has unknowingly honored the obligation of the levirate, he no longer cohabitates with her. From Perez would come the line of David.
COMMENTARY ON THE STORY
As you read the story of Tamar, I am sure you might wonder, “Why, Tamar?” She does not possess the historic importance and courage of Deborah and Jael. She is not a prophet and sister of Moses like Miriam. Her role and position was, for the most part, rather minimal. However, as you read the genealogy of Jesus in the first chapter of Matthew, she is one of the few women of Hebrew scriptures that Matthew thought it very important to document. She is an important and essential part of the Messianic ancestry of Jesus. Given the low position that women possessed in the Patriarchal Times documented in the Hebrew Scriptures, she took the initiative and means available to her to make sure of some security for herself. Disguising one as a prostitute in order to conceive the child of her father-in-law is not an activity of shame, but rather an activity of desperation to insure survival. It is as heroic as the self-sacrifice of Fantine, in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserable, who endured the degradation of prostitution to provide for her daughter, Cosette.
We never know what made Er wicked in the eyes of God. We know why God killed Onan, who disobeyed God’s will by refusing to father a child with Tamar. As I reflected on her story, I thought that God, fully knowing Salvation History, decided that the character of these two men made them unworthy to father a child who would be an integral part in the lineage of the Messiah. Tamar’s sexual relations with Judah, her father-in-law, may seem to be incestuous to us and to the people at the time of Judah. However, Judah was unaware with whom he was having sexual relations (Tamar was veiled), and, in the end, unknowingly performs the function of the Levir of being a surrogate father to a widowed woman in the family to assure her a place in his family. He never had sexual relations with her ever again.
The Holy Spirit is the inspiration behind all that is good, even when that “good” may seem to us a contradiction to the teachings of our religious traditions. It is easy for us to judge and condemn the actions of others without knowing the intent behind their actions. Judah was prepared to execute Tamar for her infidelity by burning her at the stake, insensitive to the hell to which he had condemned her. He had no foreknowledge of the important role that both he and Tamar would play in producing a child who was integral part of the lineage of the Messiah. The idea that it was God’s Spirit who inspired Tamar to take the radical step of disguising herself as a prostitute in order to bear a child of Judah. Did the idea of securing the staff and seal to prove to Judah that he was the father of her child originate solely on the wits of Tamar, or did God’s Spirit inspire her to ask for them. I believe it was the Holy Spirit. And, it was the Holy Spirit that opened the eyes and the mind of Judah to acknowledge that he was the father of Tamar’s child. We often say that “God works in mysterious ways.” As Jesus often reminded us, God’s ways are often not the ways of we who are human. I am thankful that Tamar reminds me of the wonderful, mysterious ways in which God works in our lives.
THE MUSIC
ABOUT THE MUSIC
As I approached composing the music for this song, I thought, “How on earth can I begin to express this unusual story musically?” As my father taught me, namely, all good things originate first in the Holy Spirit, I found it rather extraordinary that this song flowed quickly for me. Everything from the key areas, B minor and F# major, to the 6/4 and 6/8 meter of the music just seem to flow.
The song is in three part (ABA) form. The first part, in the key of B minor and in 6/4 meter (six beats to a measure, a quarter note getting one beat) is meant to represent the frustration and desperation of Tamar as she experiences the death of not just one, but two husbands, and the Limbo to which Judah condemns her for the rest of her life. The tempo is very slow and methodical.
The second part, in the key of F# major and in 6/8 meter (six beats to a measure the eighth note getting one beat), is meant to represent the part of Tamar’s story in which she decides to risk disguising herself as a prostitute and entice her father-in-law, Judah, in having sexual relations with her in order to conceive his child and assure her a permanent place in his family. The tempo is fast and in the form of a fugue.
The third part, is a recapitulation of the first part, and is meant to represent a now, very pregnant Tamar, who is brought in shame before her father-in-law. The very decorated melody is representative of Judah’s realization that he is the father of her child, and his vow to assure her and her child (it was unknown that she was carrying twins at this point), a permanent, safe place in his family. The song ends with “all is well” B major chord.
THE POEM
CANTICLE FOR TAMAR
Born into Patriarchal Times,
condemned to Patriarchal crimes,
when a woman’s security and worth
was measured by a fertile womb,
and the number of children she birthed.
Humanity’s great blindness
is shortsightedness,
our plans lasting so longer than
the passage of the sun
from its rising to its setting;
while God peers far into the future,
to events yet to happen,
and our lifetime’s purpose
is not isolated to just our time of life,
but a stone upon which
many other lives are built.
It matters not what Er, your first,
did to displease God so greatly,
nor Onan’s great sin of greed
which compelled him to spill his seed.
As stones, their lives were brittle and broken,
unable to support the future ahead.
But your life was the one stone
upon which the future of salvation
was to be established and built.
Judah, the fourth born of Jacob,
was ready to condemn you
to the infertile life of widowhood,
as readily as he abandoned
his brother, Joseph, selling him
into slavery to the Ishmaelites.
Exhausted from desperation
God’s love rested with you,
God’s peace and wisdom
Comforting you in your discontent.
God’s Spirit places the veil
over you face as you prepare your body,
and sets you at the gates of the city.
You entice Judah, over Inflated with wealth,
drink, and lust, to give to you
what his sons could not.
He complies and lies with you,
giving you his seal and staff,
for your sexual favors.
Your payment is your filled womb
promising you and humanity
security and hope for salvation.
Humanity’s understanding of honor
is as poverty stricken as our sight.
As you present your swollen womb,
you present to Judah his staff and seal.
God’s Spirit opens the mind and vision
of dim lit and dimwitted Judah.
Within your womb is the foundation
upon which will be built
the House of David.
The dismantled scaffold upon which
you were to be burned,
will be the wood upon which
will bear humanity’s salvation.
Through you, through your womb,
our eyes are open by God
to peer into the future
and gaze upon salvation.
© 2021 by Robert Charles Wagner. All rights reserved.
