NOTES for Gen 38:1-30
The story of Judah and Tamar interrupts the account that biblical scholars usually call the Joseph novella, the story of Joseph that is only beginning to unfold slowly before our eyes. Why does it interrupt it? To tell us that everything among God’s people was not so simple? To show how unresolved problems lead to sin? Probably for that reason too.
Yet there is also something special in the author’s intention to break off the narrative of Joseph’s life for the sake of one short and unflattering episode. One could say much about how the sin or negligence of some gives rise to the sins of others. One could compose an instructive story about how one should not try to solve one’s problems at any price, even at the price of violating God’s commandments. One could also recall that the Torah had not yet been revealed and the commandments were not yet known, unless, of course, one assumes that some of them appeared long before the Sinai revelation, during which God merely confirmed their truth.
One could reflect and speak about many things, but there is something in the account that renders all these considerations pointless. It possesses a given quality, a concise factualness that requires no commentary. This is simply how it is. Such is life. The life from which Joseph was driven out by his brothers, or from which God led him away? For now it is unclear. It is unclear both to Joseph’s brothers and to Joseph himself. One thing is clear: Joseph is bound for Egypt, while his brothers must live here. Hence this account, so that Joseph will not miss the homeland he left too much. He will not forget it, of course; there are things one does not forget. Yet it is important to see what has been left behind in all its fullness and diversity.
Later, in Egypt, Jacob’s descendants will often recall former times, and those times will seem idyllic to them. This is where the sacred writer’s account matters, so that they will not succumb to illusion. For Joseph himself too, it is a remedy against nostalgia. They say that the best cure for nostalgia is to visit one’s homeland from time to time and immerse oneself fully in its realities. Joseph, of course, did not read this chapter; it had not yet been written. Nor did Jacob’s descendants in Egypt, for the very same reason.
They had other sources of information about what was happening in the land of their fathers. The account is important for us, so that we may better understand how ambiguous everything that happens to Joseph is. So that from the very beginning it remains unclear whether his eventual arrival in Egypt is for better or for worse. By the end of the narrative, the ambiguity will disappear. By the end, but for now it remains. It is established by the logic of the biblical text, so that for the time being we must live with it.