When Shelah had become a young man and Judah did not wish to bring her back to his house, Tamar thought, How can I make the Hebrews realize that it is not marriage for which I am hungering, but rather that I am yearning for the blessing that is hidden in them? Although I am able to have relations with Shelah, I would not be able to make my faith victorious through Shelah. I ought then to have relations with Judah so that by the treasure I receive, I might enrich my poverty, and in the widowhood I preserve, I might make it clear that I did not desire marriage.

So, buoyed up with these promises Tamar sat in her father’s house, the text says, waiting for her father-in-law’s promise to take effect. When she saw that Judah was not prepared to honor his promise, for a while she accepted it mildly, forbearing to have relations with another man, being content with her widowhood and waiting for a suitable opportunity. She was anxious, you see, to have children by her father-in-law. When she saw her mother-in-law die and Judah make for Timnah to shear the flocks, she wished to obtain by stealth intercourse with her father-in-law and desired to have children by him, not out of incontinence—perish the thought—but to avoid appearing to be some nameless person. As a matter of fact, what happened was by divine design, and the result was that her scheme took effect.^[1]

Because Tamar was afraid lest Judah find out and kill her in vengeance for his two sons of whose deaths she was accused, she, like Eliezer, asked for a sign saying, Let your knowledge not condemn me for this act of desire, for you know that it is for what is hidden in the Hebrews that I thirst. I do not know whether this thing is pleasing to you or not. Grant that I may appear to him in another guise lest he kill me. [Grant] also that an invitation to lie with him might be found in his mouth, so that I may know that it is acceptable to you that the treasure, which is hidden in the circumcised, might be transmitted even through a daughter of the uncircumcised. May it be that, when he sees me, he will say to me, ‘Come, let me come into you.’

While Tamar was making supplication to God for these things, behold, Judah came out and saw her. The prayer of Tamar inclined him, contrary to his usual habit, [to go] to a harlot. When she saw him, she was veiled, for she was afraid. After the word of the sign for which she had asked had been spoken, she knew that God was pleased with what she was doing. Afterward she revealed her face without fear and even demanded remuneration from the lord of the treasure.

Let no one who hears this, however, condemn Tamar. As I said before, she was carrying out the divine plan, and hence neither did she incur any blame, nor did Judah lay himself open to any charge. I mean, as you proceed along from this point, you will find Christ tracing his lineage from the two children born to him.^[1] In particular, the two children born to him were a type of the two people, prefiguring Jewish life and the spiritual life. For the time being, however, let us see how after Judah’s departure a short time elapsed and then the affair came to light; Judah admitted his own involvement and acquitted her of any guilt. So, after Tamar had achieved what she wanted, she once more changed her dress, the text says, left the spot and returned to her home. Judah, of course, was aware of none of this; he kept his promise by sending a kid so as to recover the pledge given by him, but the woman was nowhere to be found, and the servant returned informing Judah that no word of the woman could be had anywhere. Learning this, Judah said, the text goes on, Let’s hope we are never condemned for being thought ungrateful. He was unaware of what had happened, you see.

The purpose and intention of the divinely inspired Scripture is to describe to us the mystery of Christ through countless facts. And with good reason some have compared it with a magnificent and illustrious city that does not have a single statue of its king or imperator but many statues placed in a most frequented spot, where everybody can admire them. See how Scripture does not omit any fact that refers to such mystery but rather describes at length any and all of them. Even though sometimes the text of the story does not seem to be very suitable, this does not prevent Scripture at all from rightly constructing and accomplishing its proposed demonstration. Its purpose is not to relate the lives of saints (this is not the case at all) but rather to instruct us in the knowledge of the mystery of Christ through facts, which can make our speech about him true and manifest. Therefore it cannot be criticized as if it were wandering from the truth. And in Judah and Tamar the mystery of the incarnation of our Savior is again described to us.

Moreover, [Moses] has rightly detested the weasel. For he means, “Thou shalt not be like to those whom we hear of as committing wickedness with the mouth, on account of their uncleanness; nor shall thou be joined to those impure women who commit iniquity with the mouth”.

Because of its divine institution for the propagation of man, the seed is not to be vainly ejaculated, nor is it to be damaged, nor is it to be wasted.

To have coitus other than to procreate children is to do injury to nature.

[W]omen, reputed believers, began to resort to drugs to produce sterility, and to gird themselves round, so to expel what was being conceived on account of their not wishing to have a child either by a slave or any paltry fellow, for the sake of their family and excessive wealth. Behold, into how great impiety that lawless one has proceeded, by committing adultery and murder at the same time!

But truly parricides complain of the scantiness of their means, and allege that they have not enough for bringing up more children; as though, in truth, their means were in the power of those who possess them, or that God did not daily make the rich poor, and the poor rich. If anyone shall be unable to bring up children on account of poverty, it is better to abstain from marriage than with wicked hands to mar the work of God.

God gave us eyes not to see and desire pleasure, but to see acts performed for the needs of life; so too, the genital [“generating”] part of the body, as the name itself teaches, has been received by us for no other purpose than the generation of offspring.

[I]n truth all men know that they who are under the power of this disease are wearied even of their father’s old age; and what is sweet, and universally desirable, the having children, they esteem grievous and unwelcome. Many with this view have even paid money to be childless, and have maimed their nature, not only by slaying their children after birth, but by not suffering them to be born at all.

This proves that you [Manicheans] approve of having a wife, not for the procreation of children, but for the gratification of passion. In marriage, as the marriage law declares, the man and woman come together for the procreation of children. Therefore, whoever makes the procreation of children a greater sin than copulation forbids marriage and makes the woman not a wife but a mistress, who for some gifts presented to her is joined to the man to gratify his passion.

I beseech you, flee fornication. . . . Why sow where the ground makes it its job to destroy the fruit? Where there are many efforts at abortion? Where there is murder before the birth? For even the harlot you do not let continue a mere harlot, but make her a murderess also. You see how drunkenness leads to whoredom, whoredom to adultery, adultery to murder, or rather to something even worse than murder. For I have no name to give it, since it does not take away the thing born, but prevent its being born. Why then do you abuse the gift of God, and fight with his laws, and follow after what is a curse as if it were a blessing, and make the chamber of procreation a chamber for murder, and arm the woman that was given for childbearing into slaughter? For with a view to drawing more money by being agreeable and an object of longing to her lovers, even this she will do, heaping upon your head a great pile of fire. For even if the daring deed be hers, yet the cause of it is yours. Hence too come idolatries, since many, with a view to become acceptable, devise incantations, and libations, and love potions, and countless other plans. Yet still after such great unseemliness, after slaughters, after idolatries, the thing seems to belong to things indifferent, and to many who have wives too. The mingle of mischief is the greater, for sorceries are applied not to the womb that is prostituted, but to the injured wife, and there are plottings without number, and invocations of devils, and necromancies, and daily wars, and truceless fightings, and home-cherished jealousies.

You may see a number of women who are widows before they are wives. Others, indeed, will drink sterility and murder a man not yet born, [and some commit abortion].

But I wonder why [Jovinianus] set Judah and Tamar before us for an example, unless perhaps even harlots give him pleasure; or Onan, who was slain because he grudged his brother seed [Gn 38:9]. Does he imagine that we approve of any sexual intercourse except for the procreation of children?

You [Manicheans] make your hearers adulterers of their wives when they take care that the women with whom they copulate do not conceive. They take wives according to the laws of matrimony, by tablets announcing that the marriage is contracted to procreate children; and then, fearing your law [against childbearing] . . . they copulate in a shameful union only to satisfy lust for their wives. They are unwilling to have children, on whose account alone marriages are made. Why, then, that you do not prohibit marriage, as the apostle predicted of you so long ago [1 Tm 4:1–4], when you try to take from marriage what marriage is? When this is taken away, husbands are shameful lovers, wives are harlots, bridal chambers are brothels, fathers-in-law are pimps.

For thus the eternal law, that is, the will of God, Creator of all creatures, taking counsel for the conservation of natural order, permits the delight of mortal flesh to be released from the control of reason in copulation only to propagate progeny, not to serve lust, but to see to the preservation of the race.

For necessary sexual intercourse for begetting [children] is alone worthy of marriage. But what goes beyond this necessity no longer follows reason but lust. And yet it pertains to the character of marriage . . . to yield to the partner unless by fornication the other spouse sins damnably [through adultery]. . . . [T]hey [must] not turn away from them the mercy of God . . . by changing the natural use into what is against nature, which is more damnable when it is done in the case of husband or wife. For, while that natural use, when it pass beyond the compact of marriage, that is, beyond the necessity of begetting [children], is pardonable in the case of a wife, damnable in the case of a harlot; what is against nature is execrable when done in the case of a harlot, but more execrable in the case of a wife. Of so great power is the ordinance of the Creator, and the order of creation, that . . . when the man wishes to use a body part of the wife not allowed for this purpose [orally or anally consummated sex], the wife is more shameful, if she suffer it to take place in her own case, than in the case of another woman.

I am supposing, then, although you are not lying [with your wife] for the sake of procreating offspring, you are not for the sake of lust obstructing their procreation by an evil prayer or an evil deed. Those who do this, although they are called husband and wife, are not; nor do they retain any reality of marriage, but with a respectable name cover a shame. Sometimes this lustful cruelty, or cruel lust, comes to this, that they even procure poisons of sterility. . . . Assuredly if both husband and wife are like this, they are not married, and if they were like this from the beginning, they come together [are] not joined in matrimony but in seduction. If both are not like this, either the wife is in a fashion the harlot of her husband or he is an adulterer with his own wife.

He then said, She is more innocent than I, that is, She is more righteous than I. What great sinners my sons were. ‘Because of this, I did not give her to my son Shelah.’ She is innocent of that evil suspicion that I held against her and [for which] I withheld my son Shelah from her. She who had been cheated out of marriage was justified in her fornication, and he who sent her out on account of his first two sons brought her back for the sake of his last two sons. He did not lie with her again because she had been the wife of his first two sons; nor did he take another wife, for she was the mother of his last two sons.

What is the meaning of She has more right on her side than I? In other words, she is guiltless, whereas I condemn myself and without anyone to accuse me I confess—or rather, I have sufficient accuser in the pledge given by me. Then Judah goes on to supply a defense for Tamar by saying, because I did not give her to my son Shelah. Perhaps, however, this happened for the reason that I am about to give. I mean, Judah thought that it was through her fault that death fell on Er and Onan. For fear of this he did not give Shelah to her despite promising to do so. Accordingly, so as to prove in fact that she was not responsible for their death but rather that they were punished for their own wickedness (God took his life the text says, remember, and again, he put him to death, in reference to the second one), Judah himself had intercourse with his own daughter-in-law all unawares. He learned by later developments that, far from it being her fault, those men’s wickedness made them liable to suffer punishment. So Judah admitted his own sin, delivered her from punishment and, the text says, had no further relations with her, showing that he would not previously have had intercourse with her if he had not done so in ignorance. HOMILIES ON GENESIS 62.7.^[1]

TYPES OF SPIRITUAL UNION. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA: In the first place it must be said that, even though there are some famous characters who are discovered to be guilty of acting in a not entirely honest way, however, since God in the holy Scriptures produces through them something useful for our salvation, let us drive away from us what may offend. If we take good care of our wisdom and intelligence, we are not unaware of what regards our profit. Let us consider how the blessed prophet Hosea took a prostitute as his wife, nor [did he refuse] a notorious marriage and was called the father of hateful sons, whose names were Not my people and Unpitied.^[2] I will not hesitate to declare what this means. In fact, after those who were the nobles and the princes in Israel opposed the preaching of the prophets and the divine word was unpleasing to them, in the meantime God acted through his saints so that they might see the future from what was happening as if it was magnificently and expressly depicted in a picture. God did this so they might rededicate their minds to understanding their hope and might look with the strongest application for what would have been salutary to them and might also persuade others to do the same. And they learned that they would not have been the elected people anymore but would have been received among those who show no mercy, if they behaved with hardness and immoderation. Were not they afflicted by evils and overwhelmed by them everywhere? . . . Since we now understand the criterion and direction of the divine plan in those times, we will not condemn anymore the adultery of Tamar and Judah, but rather we will say that their union occurred in the divine plan. In fact, the former was in need of the seed of procreation as her legitimate husband was lacking it. The latter was guilty of a slight fault since he was free after his first wife had already died. So this union and generation teach us about our spiritual union and the rebirth of our mind. The human mind cannot be drawn to truth in a more appropriate way.