Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #13 in Genesis 38, and we will begin reading in Genesis 38:20-26:

And Judah sent the kid by the hand of his friend the Adullamite, to receive his pledge from the woman's hand: but he found her not. Then he asked the men of that place, saying, Where is the harlot, that was openly by the way side? And they said, There was no harlot in this place. And he returned to Judah, and said, I cannot find her; and also the men of the place said, that there was no harlot in this place. And Judah said, Let her take it to her, lest we be shamed: behold, I sent this kid, and thou hast not found her. And it came to pass about three months after, that it was told Judah, saying, Tamar thy daughter in law hath played the harlot; and also, behold, she is with child by whoredom. And Judah said, Bring her forth, and let her be burnt. When she was brought forth, she sent to her father in law, saying, By the man, whose these are, am I with child: and she said, Discern, I pray thee, whose are these, the signet, and bracelets, and staff. And Judah acknowledged them, and said, She hath been more righteous than I; because that I gave her not to Shelah my son. And he knew her again no more.

I will stop reading there.  We are going to take a closer look at the Hebrew word translated as “pledge” in this passage.  It is the Hebrew word “ar-aw-bone',” and it is Strong’s Concordance #6162.  It is used three times.  It is used in verses 17 and 18, and here in verse 20.  The way God uses this word in the Bible will help us to understand the deeper spiritual meaning of Genesis 38.  Lord willing, we will get to that.

Right now I just want to look at a particular verse.  We might think that Judah’s reaction to the news of his daughter-in-law being with child by whoredom is an over-reaction and way too severe.  He said, “Bring her forth, and let her be burnt.”  But there is a Scripture that will help us understand, and it really supports the spiritual picture we are seeing here.  It says in Leviticus 21:9:

And the daughter of any priest, if she profane herself by playing the whore, she profaneth her father: she shall be burnt with fire.

Judah was not a priest, and the tribe of Judah was not the tribe of the priesthood as was the tribe of Levi.  But, spiritually, Judah was a figure of the Lord Jesus Christ who is the great High Priest of His people, and Christ was after the tribe of Melchisedec, or “in the order of Melchisedec,” as we read in the New Testament book of Hebrews.  Tamar, the daughter-in-law of Judah, is a picture of those who have intimate relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ as His people.  If it were true that she had engaged in harlotry and was with child by whoredom, then the judgment was proper according to the Law of God: “Bring her forth, and let her be burnt.”

We can see that this does have to do with Christ, with God’s Law, and the idea that Tamar had broken that Law, and she was given the pledge by Judah himself.  And remember that the pledge consisted of three items: the signet, the bracelets, and the staff of Judah.  We looked at each item, and we saw how the staff identified with the Word of God, the “rod” of God’s Word.  The bracelets identified with the priesthood that the people of God enter into after the Lord has saved us.  And the signet is the “seal,” and we looked at several verses where the word “sealed” is used, especially in the Song of Solomon 8:6:

Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm…

That is the Hebrew word translated as “signet.”  Then we went to the New Testament, and we saw how the Lord uses the word “sealed” in exactly the same way.  We went to Revelation 7 where it said, “…till we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads,” and there were 12,000 of each of the 12 tribes sealed, or “144,000” in total, representing the firstfruits unto God.  And it carried the meaning of having become saved, and so forth.  So we already understand that this is what is in view with the “signet.”

And now we will see how this ties in with the “pledge.”  The pledge was the signet, the bracelets, and the staff, and they all made up the pledge that was given by Judah, a type of Christ, to Tamar, a type of the elect.  She received the pledge.  She possessed the pledge.  Judah had come in unto her; she conceived, and then he left her.  When he left, she kept the pledge.  That is what we see from the historical setting.  She left that place which was on the way to Timnath, and she went back home to her father’s house.  She kept the pledge.  We are not told where she kept the pledge.  We are simply told in Genesis 38:19-19: “…And he gave it her, and came in unto her, and she conceived by him. And she arose, and went away, and laid by her vail from her, and put on the garments of her widowhood.”   We do not read that she went home and hid the pledge under her bed, but we know she kept it because later she produced it in Genesis 38:25:

When she was brought forth, she sent to her father in law, saying, By the man, whose these are, am I with child: and she said, Discern, I pray thee, whose are these, the signet, and bracelets, and staff.

She sent this to her father-in-law Judah at the point when she was about to be burnt for playing the harlot.  The judgment was underway, and Judah was the judge, and it says in Genesis 38:24:

And it came to pass about three months after, that it was told Judah, saying, Tamar thy daughter in law hath played the harlot; and also, behold, she is with child by whoredom. And Judah said, Bring her forth, and let her be burnt.

He was told this, and we are not informed who had told him, but they could see that Tamar’s pregnancy was starting to “show.”  But she was a widow, and her two husbands had died without any seed, and the last husband had spilled it on the ground.  So there was no way she could be pregnant, as they had died quite a while ago.  The only possibility they could see was fornication, or sex outside the marriage, which was why she was said to be “with child by whoredom.”  And Judah’s judgment was to bring her forth and let her be burned.  That was a pronouncement of condemnation.  It had everything to do with judgment.  To be killed by fire has everything to do with coming under the wrath of God because of sin, which is spiritual fornication against God’s Law.  Mankind has engaged in spiritual harlotry, and this judgment against Tamar is teaching us about God’s judgment upon each one of us because we are all guilty spiritually of what Tamar was apparently guilty of physically.  This is the judgment of the Bible, the Law of God, against sinners: “For the wages of sin is death.”  Bring forth the sinner, and let the sinner be burnt.  

That is how we can understand this, and it is true that we are sinners.  It is true that God as the righteous Judge can judge us.  And it is true that the judgment of God against the sinner is to die by the hands of an angry God.  The fire that would burn the sinners represents the furious wrath of God’s anger against us.  He is not pleased with us.  He does not love us as far as looking at His Law against sinners – it is all wrath and condemnation.  “You must die.”

We can also see how this relates to Judgment Day, our present time period.  Can you even imagine that I can say that?  And yet, it is true.  It is a fact.  The Bible teaches us that beginning on the date of May 21, 2011, God brought the world into judgment, the final judgment.  And the judgment of God upon sin is to slay the wicked and burn up all the sinners.  That is what will happen on the literal last day of this prolonged judgment day period.  The earth will be burned.  The universe will be burned.  And all the unsaved inhabitants of the earth will be burned with it.  It will happen, and they will have been destroyed by fire and annihilated out of existence, dying an eternal death, or eternal “hell,” as hell is the grave, and the grave identifies with death.  That is the judgment of God against sinful mankind because we have “played the harlot” and been involved in fornication, which is referred to as “whoredom” here. 

So when it comes to this point, it is Judgment Day.  This is the thing that I am noticing here, and I hope you are noticing too, and that is that Tamar, a picture of the true elect children of God, does not produce the “pledge” before the pronouncement of judgment.  She did not show the pledge and say, “Lord, since I am saved, I will leave this world so you can judge the rest of the sinners for whom you did not die, and who have not the pledge.”  No, that is not what happened here, and instead the judgment was declared.  It is May 21, 2011, and it is Judgment Day!  The door (to heaven) is shut, and the sun is darkened, spiritually, and the wrath of God begins to fall, and yet there are God’s people still alive and remaining, left on the earth to go through the judgment.

And Tamar heard the decree.  She heard the condemnation to let her be burnt.  But remember what we read in Isaiah 24 about the “burning” of men.  Isaiah 24 is a chapter that describes the judgment of the earth, and we read in Isaiah 24:6:

 Therefore hath the curse devoured the earth, and they that dwell therein are desolate…

That is speaking of our day.  We are living in a desolate world without the light of the Gospel unto salvation, without the Spirit of God working to save sinners, making it a wasteland from one end of the earth to the other.  The curse has devoured the four corners of the earth.  It is completely desolate, and the curse has devoured the earth.  But notice what it says next in Isaiah 24:6:

…therefore the inhabitants of the earth are burned, and few men left.

They are burned because God’s wrath has come down.  The door is shut, effectively killing the unsaved, and burning them up with the spiritual flames of His wrath and judgment.  Yet they are still physically alive, as we are physically alive, and both groups are walking around, going to work, going to the kitchen, or going outside with other people.  And yet the truly saved people of God are walking among the “dead” who have been effectively “burned” by the action of God in shutting the door of heaven.  It is just a matter of time for the prolonged Judgment Day period to elapse, and it will be a reality that the unsaved will be burned and gone for evermore.  But right now, they have been spiritually burned. 

Again, it says, “the inhabitants of the earth are burned, and few men left.”  There are few men left: “Many are called, but few are chosen.”  The implication is that the “few men left” are not burned.  The other inhabitants of the earth are burned.  In setting this stage, God is letting it be known that His elect will not burn up.  Why?  After all, we are “children of wrath even as others.”  We are sinners, and the Bible says, “…Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.”  It is not like we are ”lesser” sinners.  No, we are the chiefest of sinners.  We are the worst offenders.  We are the more horrible transgressors.  We have sinned knowingly, unlike many in the world who never came to know the Law of God all that well.  But we who have been studying the Bible still sin, and yet in God’s grace and mercy He washed away all our sins in salvation, and He gave us His Spirit and His “pledge.” 

Why have we not already been burned as billions of people have been burned spiritually?  We have not been burned because of the “pledge,” and that is the wonderful and beautiful thing that we are seeing in this historical parable of Tamar.  Tamar produced the pledge at the most critical time imaginable.  It saved her from being burnt.  As a matter of fact, something opposite of being burned happened to her when she produced the pledge.

Lord willing, we will look at that when we get together in our next Bible study.