Homily on Tamar

The Memra on Tamar is a verse homily in Syriac by Jacob of Serugh, the sixth-century poet-bishop who composed hundreds of such memre in twelve-syllable couplets. It takes up the story of Genesis 38, in which Judah withholds his youngest son from Tamar, the widow of his two eldest sons, and Tamar, disguised as a prostitute, conceives twins by Judah himself. Jacob worked within the Syriac tradition of narrative preaching, in which a biblical episode is retold, filled out with dialogue and interior speech, and then turned toward the hearers. Such homilies were composed to be delivered in a liturgical or catechetical setting, and the scandal of this chapter, an embarrassing tale placed in the very ancestry of Christ, was a challenge to any preacher who chose it.

Jacob does not soften the story. He lingers on Tamar's long deprivation and lets her speak, so that her daring is rendered as something wrung out of injustice. Judah, for his part, is exposed by his own pledge, and the memra dwells on the moment he is confronted with the staff and seal and cord and acknowledges that she is more righteous than he. The homily reads Tamar typologically, as a figure of the Church drawn from the nations and of the way God brings new life out of what looks like shame, the same pattern Jacob finds in the other women of Matthew's genealogy. Judah's confession becomes a model of repentance, a confession that is public, costly, and freely made. Throughout, Jacob's method is to make the narrative vivid enough that hearers must take sides and then see themselves in the one who is judged.

The memra remains worth reading because it shows how the early Syriac church handled a disturbing text, neither explaining it away nor condemning its characters, but trusting that God's grace is not embarrassed by the genealogy it enters. It is also a fine specimen of Jacob's art, in which exegesis, drama, and devotion are held together in verse. For modern readers it offers a patient and morally serious reading of a woman's vulnerability and vindication, and of a man's undoing by his own evasions.

Who should read this: readers interested in patristic and Syriac biblical interpretation, in how the church has preached difficult Old Testament narratives, or in the poetic theology of the Syriac tradition. It will especially reward preachers and students of Scripture who want a model of imaginative, text-driven homiletics. It is not for those seeking a modern critical or historical treatment of Genesis 38, nor a short devotional reading, since the form is a long poetic retelling that rewards slow attention.