And he said, I will send thee a kid from the flock. And she said, Wilt thou give me a pledge, till thou send it?
Judah promises to send a young goat from the flock, and Tamar asks for a pledge to hold until he sends it, in an encounter where she is disguised so that he does not recognize her. The verse belongs to the account of the sin of Judah and of his family, in which Tamar acted as a harlot with her father-in-law. Within that history it comes after Joseph was sold into Egypt and before the account of Joseph being bought by Potiphar in Egypt. It is part of the account of the low standards of morality and crime that arose among Jacob's descendants amid the consequences of his having more than one wife.
The Bible records Judah's sin not to excuse sin or to appeal to lust, but to reveal sin so that it may be shunned. Tamar stands in Christ's ancestry, and Pharez, born of a harlot, stands in the human line from which Christ came according to the flesh, showing that his family history includes women whose lives were not exemplary and offering hope to the fallen.
That tainted birth, together with Jacob's selfish, crafty, deceitful disposition passed to his sons, Rahab's unenlightened heathen background, and the weakness, idolatry and sin of Solomon, Rehoboam, Abijah, Jehoram, Ahaz, Manasseh, Amon and other kings of Judah, tended to concentrate in Christ all the weaknesses and sinful tendencies of fallen humanity. Although his mother was pure and godly, his human nature was therefore more subject to infirmities of the flesh than if he had been born before the race deteriorated physically and morally. This condition of his birth was not accidental but a necessary part of redemption, for only by taking the flesh of sinful man that is subject to death could he suffer death and be made like his brethren to sympathize with and succor the tempted.
Judah promises to send a young goat from the flock, and Tamar asks for a pledge to hold until he sends it, in an encounter where she is disguised so that he does not recognize her. The verse belongs to the account of the sin of Judah and of his family, in which Tamar acted as a harlot with her father-in-law. Within that history it comes after Joseph was sold into Egypt and before the account of Joseph being bought by Potiphar in Egypt. It is part of the account of the low standards of morality and crime that arose among Jacob's descendants amid the consequences of his having more than one wife.
The Bible records Judah's sin not to excuse sin or to appeal to lust, but to reveal sin so that it may be shunned. Tamar stands in Christ's ancestry, and Pharez, born of a harlot, stands in the human line from which Christ came according to the flesh, showing that his family history includes women whose lives were not exemplary and offering hope to the fallen.
That tainted birth, together with Jacob's selfish, crafty, deceitful disposition passed to his sons, Rahab's unenlightened heathen background, and the weakness, idolatry and sin of Solomon, Rehoboam, Abijah, Jehoram, Ahaz, Manasseh, Amon and other kings of Judah, tended to concentrate in Christ all the weaknesses and sinful tendencies of fallen humanity. Although his mother was pure and godly, his human nature was therefore more subject to infirmities of the flesh than if he had been born before the race deteriorated physically and morally. This condition of his birth was not accidental but a necessary part of redemption, for only by taking the flesh of sinful man that is subject to death could he suffer death and be made like his brethren to sympathize with and succor the tempted.