1Genesis 38
âLest We Become a Laughingstockâ
Two men meet when they are young, virile, just entering adulthood. They are neighbors, men who attain power and influence. They are known by the locals, who work for them. When they ask questions, they are taken seriously. When they give orders, they are heard and obeyed. Their relationship is stable; neither conflict nor external threats divide them. They collude in controlling events; together, they own the story. Above all else, they are friendsâtrue to each other, dedicated, loyal, and trustworthy. Their friendship is a lasting one with a long history; these two men will grow older together. Sex is a feature at the outset and sex will continue to dominate their narrative. Women are necessary to the intimacy that develops between them.
Judah and Hirah, of Genesis 38, are men of the world who offer readers a biblical version of a familiar phenomenon: powerful men building a friendship based on and sustained by the use of a woman's body. It is a piece of Hebrew Bible we have yet to appreciate for its depiction of a story line modern readers know well: men enjoying themselves and their relationship through the enjoyment of women. As Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick writes: âWe are in the presence of male heterosexual desire, in the form of a desire to consolidate partnership with authoritative males in and through the bodies of womenâ (38).
Genesis 38 confirms that female bodies are subject to male power and control, objects of male transactions. We also learn that women's bodies are, in fact, fodder for the creation of male friendship in the first place. Judah and Hirah's friendship is grounded in sex and developed through sexâbut not, seemingly, with each other. Their friendship emerges because of the sexual use of a third personaâand a female one. In Genesis 38, women are controlled sexually in order that men be friends.
This important message has yet to be explored. Instead, commentators have read Genesis 38 as a story about a woman's bravery and initiative. Or, perhaps, the very opposite: a patriarchal tale of a woman's oppression and eventual erasure. Tamar, the female protagonist of the narrative, represents a cultic leader whose origin stories can be found in ancient Mesopotamia. Or she represents a type-character found in Hebrew Bible: the foreigner whose adherence to Israelite law and whose righteous behavior contrast with the sneaky, selfish, and superstitious behavior of less noble members of the tribe.1
Scholars have analyzed each of the thirty verses of Genesis 38 for decades. The narrative continues to preoccupy academic circles. To what author, age, or purpose should we ascribe the chapter's origin?2 What themes does the author mean to highlight?3 Why does a story about Judah suddenly, and without warning, interrupt a novella about Joseph?4 Some scholars read this text as a triumph of womanpower, a narrative of the oppressed getting their own back. Others suggest that Tamar's desperate actions are proof positive of the inveterate patriarchy that permeates the pages of the Hebrew Bible.5
Regardless of so many diverse claims and conclusions, the central characters are, at least for most commentators, obvious. The story is about Judah and Tamar, no matter how one defines âabout.â6 Both characters have been explored at extraordinary length. Their agency, voice, perfidy, deception, and placeâall these have been exhaustively researched. In the apparently binary world of the text, other characters serve only to advance or illuminate the interests of Judah and Tamar. That is their sole purpose.
And yet there is a third character with a name, a place, and a voice in this narrative. In the Hebrew Bible, these things are not insignificant. Unnamed characters can have important positions in a narrative. Named ones who speak and act should not be dismissed or ignored. Hirah's role is not inconsequential; he is a co-creator and colleague, an advisor, counselor, and above all, a friend. Given the critical part he plays in the plot, we may fairly speculate about the nature of his friendship with Judah, and whether it gestures, at least, to homoerotic possibilities.
Commentators who do pay attention to Hirah regard him either as the author's way to emphasize Judah's alienation from his Israelite clan (Andrew, 262; Lambe, 55â60), or, simply, as Judah's foil, a bumbling and shadowy presence in the text.7 The latter view is especially convincing for a number of readers. The two men, one scholar writes, engage in âbewildered action and conversationâ; they are a comic pair (Johanna W. H. Bos, 41). We are meant to laugh at their foolishness. âIf ever a fool was, he was Judah in Genesis 38,â writes Melissa Jackson. âJudah is his own worst enemyâŚâ (40). Judahâand, it seems, his sidekickâstumble from one misstep to the next; Judah cannot see that he is the goat of the story (Wildavsky, 40). Or Hirah is the goat, deceived by Judah (Kim, 559).
But to ignore or displace Hirah and to relegate him to the role of Judah's foil leads to important interpretive consequences. Scholars have muddied the waters, frequently ascribing to Judah alone concerns clearly shared by Hirah. Their relationshipâand its power to set the story in motion, decree developments, and define characterâhas often been overlooked, if not ignored. Without this friendship, there is no plot.
Judah and Hirah's relationship is pivotal. It is introduced at the outset, setting the stage for Judah's move to separate himself from his brothers and father. It is a lasting camaraderie, one that lasts through decades of shared experience. The two enjoy a friendship that begins with Judah's marriage and endures as Judah's three sons are born and the two eldest grow to manhood. After Judah's wife dies and he completes his mourning period, it is Hirah who will be part of his first foray into male homosociality, accompanying him to a harvest festival that will grant both men multiple and varied opportunities for self-indulgence. Both the biblical author and his male audience know what to expect at such events: men feasting, drinking, carousing, and celebrating. When Judah stops on the way to hire a woman he takes for a prostitute, Hirah is by his side. When someone must discreetly redeem the pledges Judah had offered the woman in lieu of payment, it is Hirah whom Judah sends. It will be their mutual embarrassment that Judah will seek to avoid when their joint attempt at a cover up fails. Hirah supports Judah through all that he does and all that he decides; Hirah is a good friend, indeed. Their friendship, we will learn, will be based on and sustained by the use and abuse of women's bodies. The male homosocial order of the Hebrew Bible is built on just that.
In the first verse of Genesis 38 the author announces that Judah has left the fellowship of his brothers and âturnedâ (×××) to a âcertain AdullamiteââHirah. The verb in this verse is coupled with a preposition that emphasizes the direction Judah's movements take; he has turned toward something or someone (××× ×˘×). In this case, there is no ambiguity: Judah turns to Hirah, who is clearly named as a foreigner. Men and their various relationships with other menâwhether familial or notâare part and parcel of this first verse, and the specificity of the language is no accident. Certainly, Judah found a neighborhood and, it seems, a new friend. He will, almost immediately, find a wife as well.
It's hardly surprising that Judah would be on the lookout for a new start. Just a few verses earlier, he was attempting to convince his siblings not to kill their younger brother, Joseph, outright, but to sell him into slavery (Gen. 37:26â27).8 Now, Judah leaves his brothers, men willing to commit fratricide. He appears to seek male companionship elsewhere, outside of his family unity. We should note that male-male friendships in the Hebrew Bible frequently evoke the terminology and associations of brotherhood and kinship precisely because friends and brothers are, as Olyan writes, âshared classificationsâ (Olyan, 25â8). Male friendships can and do replace and supplant biological kinship. Judah and Hirah's relationship fits just such a mold.
Judah's fresh start goes swimmingly. His search for new relationships is immediately rewarded. In Gen. 38:2, Judah âseesâ a local woman. The text emphasizes location: Judah's gaze falls upon her there (×××¨× ×Š×). The verb of seeing is immediately followed by another directional and positional clue. Judah didn't just happen on the woman in some irrelevant place, but rather in Hirah's locale, where he has just settled. Judah's âturnâ to Hirah occurs right after his abandonment of his blood brothers. His marriage to a local woman will follow immediately. The immediacy of these two developments leads us to wonder: did Hirah introduce Judah to the woman in question? Was Judah invited to his friend's neighborhood with the promise of sexual action of some sort?
The woman Judah sees has no particular name of her own; she is simply bat Shua, the daughter of a Canaanite by the name of Shua. The patriarchs typically have something to say about the women their sons take for wives, even controlling the search and the consequent pairing. In Genesis 24, Abraham deploys his servant to recruit a wife for Isaac. Isaac, in turn, is annoyed by the wives Esau takes and insists that Jacob avoid taking a wife from the Canaanites around him (Gen. 28:1â2), sending him to his relatives to find a suitable bride. Once Laban and Jacob agree not to venture on each other's territory in Genesis 31, Jacob's sons can marry only local, non-Israelite women. Still, Jacob has no say in the matter where Judah is concerned because his son makes that impossible. Judah has chosen to leave his father; he is out of Jacob's reach. Judah's biographyâhis life story, in factâis now defined by his association with Hirah, not by his family of men.
Judah sees bat Shua, âtakes her and enters herâ (Gen. 38:2). Immediately after we experience the male gaze, we witness the act of sex from the male perspective. Bat Shua becomes pregnant immediately and sequentially, bearing three boys in quick succession. It is important to note that the author is not merely offering a genealogy of the sort we are used to, one that names the father and the sons in a single, dry verse.9 Rather, the author emphasizes bat Shua's pregnancies and thus the sexual acts that produce them. Judah sees bat Shua. He takes her (××ק××). He âgoes intoâ her (×××× ××××). She becomes pregnant (38:3). And again (38:4). And again (38:5). All three births produce sons. Judah demonstrates his virility and fertility in short order. The Hebrew Bible emphasizes that a real man is a fertile one who can sire more men. Judah does not disappoint.
According to A. van Selms, the friendship between Hirah and Judah is almost certainly connected to Judah's marriage:
Immediately after the first mention of the name of Hirah the Adullamite, the marriage of Judah with Bath-Shuah is described; it may be understood that Hirah, being himself a Canaanite of some standing, introduced him to Shuah and arranged the marriage. Moreover it was Hirah, called then âJudah's friend,â who was later sent out by Judah to pay the supposed harlot for her offices unto Judah. Notwithstanding the fact that Bath-Shuah had died some time before, the tie between Judah and the best man at his marriage with Bath-Shuah remained the same as before, and therefore it was Hirah who was sent out on this delicate and, perhaps in ancient Canaanite eyes, not so sordid an errand.
(van Selms, 120)
Van Selms argues that Genesis 38 offers the reader a âtypeâ relationship known to both Ancient Near Eastern cultures and the Hebrew Bible. Hirah is functioning, here, as a kind of âking's friend.â Several such characters appear in biblical texts, and, like Hirah, they are always described with the same nomenclature. Hirah is a re'ah (רע), a âfriendâ to Judah (Gen. 38:12, 20) as Hushai is a friend to King David (2 Sam. 15:37, 16:16), as Ahuzzath is a friend to King Abimelech (Gen. 26:26), and as Jonadab is a friend to Amnon, David's first-born son and next-in-line to the throne (2 Sam. 13:3).
The âking's friend,â van Selms points out, functio...
