As I sit and wait for President Obama to speak at the Lincoln Memorial in honor of the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech; and as I watch woman after woman and man after man—black and white alike—stand to speak before the president arrives, I think about the plight of women back when the story of Judah and Tamar took place.
Briefly, my thoughts are this:
- How in the world did Tamar find the amazing strength it took to stand for what was right?
- How in the world did Tamar live with herself knowing she had to seduce her father-in-law to accomplish this?
- How in the world did Tamar manage to stay clear-headed enough to bargain Yehuda’s symbols of power away from him before agreeing to have sex with him?
- Did Tamar ever question her own choices?
- Did Tamar ever wish she had not married Yehuda’s son, Er, or Onan?
- Did Tamar ever feel bitter about being a woman in a society that treated women as incapable of being in charge?
