NOTES for Gen 38:1-30
The story of Judah and Tamar interrupts the narrative that biblical scholars usually call the Joseph novella, the story of Joseph, which is only beginning to unfold slowly before our eyes. It interrupts it - for what purpose? To tell us that everything among the people of God was not so simple? To show how problems not resolved in time lead to sin? For that too, perhaps.
Yet there is something special in the author's design: to break off the narrative of Joseph's life for the sake of one small episode, and an unflattering one at that. One could say a great deal about how the sin or negligence of some gives rise to the sins of others. One could compose a moralizing story about how not to try to solve one's problems at any cost, even at the cost of violating God's commandments. Along the way, one could remember that the Torah had not yet been revealed and the commandments were not yet known, unless, of course, one supposes that some of them appeared long before the Sinai revelation, when God only confirmed their truth.
One could reason and talk about many things, but there is something in the story that makes all of that beside the point. It has that givenness, that factual terseness, that requires no commentary. Simply: this is how it is. This is life. The life from which Joseph's brothers drove him out - or did God lead him out? 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, and his brothers must live here. That is what the story is for: so that Joseph will not miss the homeland he left too much. Of course he will not forget it, he will not forget it anyway. There are things one does not forget. But it is still important to see what has been left behind in all its fullness and all its variety.
Later, in Egypt, Jacob's descendants will often remember earlier times, and those times will seem idyllic to them. That is where the sacred writer's story comes in: so that they will not give in to illusion. And for Joseph himself, too, as a remedy against nostalgia. They say the best cure for nostalgia is periodic trips home with full immersion 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 story is important for us, so that we may understand more clearly how ambiguous everything happening to Joseph is. So that from the beginning it is still unclear: is the fact that he ends up in Egypt for better or for worse? By the end of the narrative the ambiguity will disappear. By the end, but for now it is there. It is set by the logic of the biblical text, so that for now we must live with it.