Annotatio CXIV

”Judah, going in to her, said: Suffer me to lie with thee.” — Genesis 38:16

Chrysostom, examining the intercourse of Judah and Tamar — namely, of a father-in-law with [his] daughter-in-law, described in the present chapter — seems to think diverse and plainly contrary things to his own words.¹ For in homily 62 on Genesis, freeing both the father-in-law and the daughter-in-law from all crime, he writes thus: “Tamar wished to steal intercourse with her father-in-law, and from that to procreate children — not desiring to satisfy lust (far be this!), but it was a dispensation, what was done.” And after a few [words], adducing three reasons for this opinion, he says: “Let no one, hearing these things, condemn Tamar: for, as I said, she ministered to a dispensation; and therefore she neither merits any reprehension thence, nor was Judah liable to crimes. For behold, proceeding by this way, you will find that from the children born to Judah, Christ, according to the flesh, draws [his] lineage. Moreover, these two sons born through him were a figure of two peoples, and a certain prediction of the Jewish and the spiritual life.” By these three reasons Chrysostom in this place defends Judah and Tamar, whom in other places he openly condemns — her indeed as incestuous, him as a fornicator. For, in the first homily on Matthew, making mention of the intercourse of that same Tamar, he says thus: “Why did Matthew, in the generation of Christ, bring forward only those women who were noted for some vice² — that is, if any was an adulteress, or a harlot, if any was also not legitimately coupled in marriage, if any was foreign or barbarian? For the Evangelist commemorates not only the wife of Uriah, but also Tamar and Ruth: of whom one indeed was foreign, as Ruth; another a prostitute, as Tamar, who had dealings with a kinsman — not only not joined to him by the law of marriage, but [having] stolen the intercourse, and concealed under the habit of a harlot.” To which question the same [Chrysostom], satisfying [it] in the third homily on Matthew, assigns three causes of this deed: the first, that he might show that Christ — who had come to extinguish our reproaches — deigned to have sinners as ancestors,³ blushing at nothing on account of our evils; the second, to demonstrate to us that we are not to [glory] in [our] parents, even in the foul filth of the disgrace of fornication and adultery, if we are adorned by our own virtue (which is not discolored by the reproaches of a parent); the third, to repress the arrogance of the Jews, who gloried too insolently in the virtues of [their] ancestors — teaching that their own patriarch Judah, from whom the Jews take [their] name, committed no small offense in the fornication with Tamar.

Thus far Chrysostom: whose former opinion Ambrose follows (book 3 of the commentary on Luke), and Theodoret (question 94 on Genesis); but the latter assertion of the same [Chrysostom] Jerome embraces (in the Hebrew Questions), and St. Augustine — who, meeting the reasons adduced for Chrysostom’s first assertion, says, in book 22 against Faustus, that not all the deeds of men are to be approved by us,⁴ [even those] from which certain good things, according to the dispensation of divine providence, either follow or are signified. For divine providence, everywhere preserving its own goodness, and drawing good as much from the evil as from the good works of men, willed — from the lust of Judah, who, overcome by concupiscence, went in to Tamar — not only to effect something of good, but to signify prophetically certain future goods. For to signify certain goods, it matters nothing whether those deeds, by which they are signified, be good or evil. Aloysius [Ludovico], Bishop of Verona, in the Catena of explanations on Genesis, says: “Judah is not to be excused from the sin of fornication, nor is the fornication to be approved, as [that] of an unmarried man with an unmarried woman: for he sinned in manifold ways — and in others, by lying, by betrayal, and by hatred.” Rabbi Simeon [bar Yohai], in the commentaries on the Pentateuch which bear the title Zohar, frees her from all crime, because she did this not for the sake of satisfying lust, but by a certain pious instinct — namely, that she might conceive from Judah the awaited Messiah.