Take My Wife... Please!

SPEAKER_1 (0:01)

This is Michael Medved. Otto von Bismarck, the Chancellor of Germany, once said that God offers special protection to drunkards, lost dogs, children, and the United States of America.

We'll explore that special protection and what it means in The American Miracle. Subscribe to The American Miracle on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Dan McClellan (0:30)

It's no benefit to us if we kill our brother. Let's sell him. So Judah's already not looking good from a modern sensibilities point of view, but...

Dan Beecher (0:41)

He's a dick.

Dan McClellan (0:44)

To put it bluntly, yes, that is what Judah is. Hey everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

Dan Beecher (0:54)

And I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan (0:55)

And you are listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How are things today, Dan?

Dan Beecher (1:07)

Good. Things are good. We're delving deep into some, I don't know, some stuff that some people might find disturbing this week. Yeah. It's not easy stuff.

And all of it is... Well, let's just say that if you have feminist sensibilities like I do...

Dan McClellan (1:30)

Which you should.

Dan Beecher (1:33)

You're not going to like a lot of things you hear today.

Dan McClellan (1:36)

Yeah.

As you're probably used to hearing on the podcast, we're going to get weird today. It's a little problematic.

Dan Beecher (1:49)

The first half will be a little less problematic than the last.

The last one, we're just going to give you a trigger warning right now. If you're triggered by mentions of sexual assault or whatever, please feel free to skip the last half. But do listen to the first half, even though it will still piss you off.

Dan McClellan (2:10)

Precisely.

Dan Beecher (2:12)

Yeah. So should we dive into this?

Dan McClellan (2:15)

I don't think we have any other choice at this point.

Dan Beecher (2:17)

We must do it. It is our job after all.

We're starting off in Genesis, Chapter 38 And what's weird about Chapter 38 in Genesis is that Chapter 37 starts off the Joseph being sold into slavery story. It's the whole Joseph story.

Then Chapter 38, nothing about that at all. It's about his brother. And then Chapter 39, back to Joseph. So it's like this weird sort of interruption of the narrative.

Dan McClellan (2:52)

Kind of an A-B kind of sitcom thing. Right, right.

Dan Beecher (2:58)

This is the Kramer plot.

Dan McClellan (3:00)

You got to think about He-Man where they went...

and shot over to the other scene. And we're dealing with Judah and Tamar.

Dan Beecher (3:13)

Now, this is Judah for whom the kingdom of Judah is eventually named. Is that right?

Dan McClellan (3:19)

That would be accurate.

Dan Beecher (3:20)

Okay. So pretty fancy dude.

Dan McClellan (3:23)

Yeah, he's big time. And we've got Israel is Jacob, who is Judah's father. And that's the northern kingdom of Israel. And then Judah is the southern kingdom of Judah, Judah being one of the 12 sons of Israel. And Judah was kind of doing some silly stuff in the previous chapter, 37, comes up with this idea. Hey, you know, it's no benefit to us if we kill our brother, let's sell him into slavery. And so Judah is already not looking good from modern sensibilities point of view, but he's a dick.

To put it bluntly, yes, that is what Judah is. But in chapter 38, we're going to see a little bit about his family, and we're going to bring into view a principle called Leverett marriage, which we're going to talk a little bit more about once we get into it. But to start, Judah went down with his brothers and settled near a certain Adulamite whose name was Hira. And so we're in Canaan, Judah marries Shua, and they have a son named Ur.

And then they have another son named Onan, and then they have another son named Shelah.

Dan Beecher (4:46)

Now, a lot of people who talk about Chapter 38 focus in on the Onan part of the story.

Dan McClellan (4:54)

Yes, you may have heard of Onan before. You probably haven't heard of Ur, much less Shelah. But so Judah picks out a wife, and in this time period, your marriages were closely related to what we think of as arranged marriages, where a father was like, I like the cut of her jib. I'm going to go talk to her father, and I'm going to secure a contract so that either right now or when they come of age, my son will marry this guy's daughter. And so he pays a bride price. The father of the young woman profits from letting his daughter go. And that's usually the betrothal. So that's when they're engaged. And that engagement period could be pretty long, but they were contractually married, basically. They just had to consummate the marriage and then actually go off and become part of their own household. But we got a problem.