LOSS AND DECEPTION

I should have added this years ago...but I'm adding it now....

So as the story goes, many years ago, Judah, one of the twelve sons of Jacob, had his own three sons. The oldest son (Er) married a woman named Tamar.

For reasons that we may never know, he died. Evil in ways not recorded and leaving his wife a widow. And according to law and tradition she was given to the next brother - Onan. A man who went erroneously down in history as the guilt bearer of masturbation. Not that he did. When sleeping with Tamar, he would withdraw from her to "spill his seed upon the ground" for he could not bear the thought that his offspring would, by law, be his brother's. Then soon too he died. Not for reasons of dirty sheets or selfishness, but for reasons bigger than he (or her) could even fathom.

So went Tamar. Yearning in her passing seasons, denied her harvest and burning like the Judean sun.

Judah...now with the loss of his two eldest sons, still had a third. Too young yet to marry, but what if he too would go the way of his eldest? Perhaps this woman was accursed? Poisoned wombed. Widow maker.

Judah denied her him. Yet Tamar's womb kindled with a storm that even she did not understand. The desire to bear a child is already a force lost to understanding on those without that call. But...

Tamar's....was more. Perhaps more than any other woman who has ever lived. There is an "I want" and there is an "I need." This was "there shall be." As God in his thunder rains life and death and glory and redeeming blood, she would have a child.

Then Judah's wife too falls dead. His life now written in the language of loss. Two sons, a wife and a brother sold into slavery. He goes to his place of grieving and Tamar to hers. Two husbands and a womb of fire.

But life forces its ways. A time of grieving passes and not that his was, but he left his grieving to return to his fields. This Tamar heard. And a plan was devised, mixed of need and a force beyond her understanding. And she went to town....

Dressed as a prostitute she sat upon the roadway for her father in law. Did she desire him or was it the child that called from the distant unseen country to demand existence?

And as the story goes, Judah saw her along the roadway. Her identity veiled, yet was there something familiar? What was it, Judah? Was it the stretch of the leg, the poem of her hips, or was it a spark of healing, familiar in it's voice and a salve for the wounds of loss?

And so he layed with her. The details of the tryst lost to history, but one can imagine. Did he merely sleep with the willing or in his awkward aging thrusts, taste a love lost to death?

Regardless, the deed was done and payment was expected. The goat he offered was obviously not in his possession, so he left his staff, his sash and his ring as promise for the forthcoming payment. And they parted.

Judah sent his servant with payment, but as the events played out, she was gone. He returned quickly to avoid the greater cost of shame for his master.

In the time to come, word came back to Judah - Tamar has been a prostitute and is now pregnant...

"Bring her out and have her burned to death!" he cried. So they found Tamar, ripe with child and seized her for her sin.

And as they were brought her in she sent a message to deliver. Holding the staff, the ring and the sash, she said, "I am pregnant by the man who owns these."

And before Judah, the day gave up his secrets and his shame rained upon him like falling trees. "More righteous than I," he said of her. And did he weep? We do not know. He never slept with her again and in the months to come, she would give birth to, not just one, but two boys. The details of the one who thrust his hand out first and tied with a scarlet cord, only to withdraw back into the womb to make way for his brother is perhaps for another day.

But on that day, Tamar's longing found finally fruition. Two sons - Perez and Zerah (of the scarlet cord)

But what now of all this? Incest, death, spilled seed and hard won offspring? Just another twisted exchange in the pages of history?

Not until the story completes itself in the centuries to come did all of it become clear. For if one believes in such things, there was a lineage spelled out in a bloodline that began with a man named Abraham and ended with a foretold Messiah. Whether Jesus was the Messiah is not for this story to argue, but his history reached backwards through a litany of names unknown to most - Jacob, Akim, Manasseh, David, Perez....and a woman who just wanted a baby.

Tamar. Tamar and Judah. Onan forfeited his role in history and it was completed through a deception. There are some things that just need to happen.

OILGRAPH ON WOODEN PANAL - 36X48
created in performance at black cat gallery june 2009