Genesis 38:26
And Judah acknowledged them, and said, She hath been more righteous than I; because that I gave her not to Shelah my son. And he knew her again no more. And Judah acknowledged them, and said, She hath been more righteous than I; because that I gave her not to Shelah my son. And he knew her again no more.
Judah admitted that Tamar was more righteous than he was because he had broken his promise to give her to his son Shelah, and he had no further sexual relations with her afterward. Before making that admission he had judged adultery to be worthy of death. He had failed to recognize Tamar because she had disguised herself and acted outside her usual manner, so that the time, place, speech, and clothing hid her identity from him.
The verse stands in Genesis 37 to 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 good dealings with him in it all, leading to the famine, the reunion with his father's family in Genesis 42 to 45, and Judah's plea before Joseph for Benjamin in Genesis 44:18-34. Judah's withholding of Shelah was a failure of the levirate duty toward a widowed daughter-in-law, and the verse with its surrounding account is an incidental reference to a usage later included in the Mosaic code, showing that levirate marriage was already recognized in patriarchal times before Moses and proving that not all so-called Mosaic laws originated with Moses. The chapter to which the verse belongs exposes Judah's sin so that sin may be shunned rather than excused or used to indulge lust, while also revealing God's remedy through his love, mercy, and power. The sorry incidents of Genesis 38, including this verse, are not necessary to the narrative of Jacob and Joseph, which shows how God overrules human wrath, ambition, and jealousy for his praise and works out his providence for the true and faithful.
The verse belongs to the account in which Pharez, an ancestor of Christ according to the flesh, was born to Tamar, who acted the part of a harlot with her father-in-law, and this lineage shows that Christ's human ancestry included moral weakness, degraded human nature, and human sin and weakness. Jacob's selfish, crafty, and deceitful disposition passed to his sons and concentrated human weakness in Christ, so Christ took flesh not from a sinless being but from sinful, fallen humanity with all its weaknesses, sinful tendencies, and increased subjection to infirmity of the flesh after the race had deteriorated physically and morally, in order that he could suffer death and be made like his brethren to redeem them. Tamar's place among Christ's ancestors shows that hope is offered even to the fallen and to those with inherited sinful tendencies. In contrast to Judah's ignorance and forgetfulness, which estrange love and knowledge in creatures, the Lord knows who are his, his eye is always over them, he is never subject to ignorance or forgetfulness, and his eye and ear cannot be darkened.