Genesis 38:25
When she was brought forth, she sent to her father in law, saying, By the man, whose these are, am I with child: and she said, Discern, I pray thee, whose are these, the signet, and bracelets, and staff. When she was brought forth, she sent to her father in law, saying, By the man, whose these are, am I with child: and she said, Discern, I pray thee, whose are these, the signet, and bracelets, and staff.
When she was brought forth, Tamar sent to her father-in-law Judah his signet, bracelets, and staff and asked him to discern whose they were, thereby identifying him as the man by whom she was with child. She was able to do this because she had disquieted herself and walked in an unaccustomed path, so that Judah did not know her. The verse belongs to the account in which Judah treated adultery as a crime worthy of death, and when Tamar's trespass was exposed he acknowledged that his own sin was greater than hers. The verse belongs to the account of Judah's shameful sinful conduct.
The verse is part of the account of the sad consequences of Jacob's having more than one wife, which included partiality, jealousy, envy, low moral standards, and crime. The verse stands in Genesis 37-41, which record Joseph's early life, the envy of his brothers, his sale to the Ishmaelites as a slave, his sojourn in Egypt, and God's wondrously good dealings with him in it all. The verse is part of the history of Joseph's family, which illustrates that God can guide people through difficult and unexpected circumstances toward what he intends for them.
The chapter records the birth of Perez, also called Pharez, an ancestor of Christ according to the flesh, born of harlotry, making Tamar herself one of Christ's ancestors. This puts gross sin in Christ's own human line, together with Jacob's selfish crafty deceitful disposition, David's passions, Rahab's unenlightened heathenism, and the weakness, idolatry, and sin of Solomon and the kings of Judah, tending to concentrate in Christ all the weaknesses and sinful tendencies to which fallen human nature is subject. 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 had deteriorated physically and morally, and this was not accidental but necessary, for only sin causes death and only by taking sinful flesh could he suffer death, be tempted, sympathize, and succor the tempted. As part of the Bible's record of Christ's ancestors, including women whose lives were marked by shame, the verse presents hope for the fallen, even for those with inherited tendencies toward sin. The chapter records this shameful conduct not to excuse sin, but to expose it so that people may shun it and see the remedy in God's love, mercy, and power. The verse shows that time, place, speech, or apparel can obscure human sight and that ignorance and forgetfulness can estrange love and knowledge in the creature, while by contrast the Lord knows who are his and his eye is always over them, never obscured or darkened, discerning his own everywhere.