פירוש על בראשית 38:11

‘כי אמר וגו FOR HE SAID etc. — that is to say, he pushed her off with a straw (i.e., he put her off with a lame excuse) because he never intended to give her to him in marriage

ABIDE A WIDOW AT THY FATHER’s HOUSE. The meaning thereof is that “you should conduct yourself there as a widow until Shelah be grown up.” He suggested to her: “Place yourself in mourning, put on mourning garments, do not anoint yourself with oil, as a woman girded with sack-cloth for the bridegroom of her youth,¹⁶⁵Joel 1:8. until Shelah be grown up and he will marry you.” Such was the custom of a widow waiting to be married: she who desires to be married to a stranger wears mourning garments only for a short period as is the custom, and then feigning comfort arrays herself in scarlet. And she covered herself with a veil,¹⁶⁶Verse 14 here. Ramban thus interprets the verse; And she removed the garments of her widowhood, and covered herself with a veil, as an indication that she was no longer mourning. See Ramban further, Verse 16. until she be married to a man.

שבי אלמנה, wait for a while in a state of widowhood. This expression also occurs in Hoseah 3,3 ימים רבים תשבי לי, “you will have to go a long time without marrying.”

ויאמר... כי אמר פן ימות גם הוא כאחיו, in commenting on Yehudah’s reasoning, Bereshit Rabbah 85.5 quotes Rabbi Eleazar as saying [Rashi’s interpretation of his statement, Ed.] that although the Torah has enjoined us לא תנחשו, (Leviticus 19,26) not to be superstitious as for instance to allow a black cat crossing our path to determine our actions, there is such a thing as a סימן, a “hint from a higher domain,” to heed which is not idolatrous. Such a “hint” would be a catastrophe of the same kind three times repeated. This is what Yehudah was afraid of.

שבי אלמנה בית אביך, “dwell as a widow in your father’s home, etc.” This was a rejection of Tamar as Shelah’s future wife; Yehudah had no intention of ever letting Shelah marry Tamar. Nachmanides writes that he does not understand why Yehudah had to reject her in such a round about fashion; he could have simply told her to go home and feel free to marry anyone else. Furthermore, seeing that Yehudah was so concerned about Tamar having had sexual relations with someone that he was prepared to convict her of death by burning, clearly he did expect her to marry Shelah, why else maintain the fiction that she was a levirate wife in limbo, and as such forbidden to be intimate with any other man? Moreover, it is most unlikely that Yehudah had not heard that the cause of his sons dying was not Tamar but their own sins. I believe therefore, that Shelah was perfectly suitable to be the husband of Tamar in a levirate marriage, but his father did not want him to marry Tamar while he was still young, (immature) so that he would not commit a sin similar to those committed by his brothers. They died in their youth precisely because they were too immature, neither of them being even 12 years of age. When Shelah would reach maturity and therefore be obedient to his father’s moral and ethical instructions, he would be quite prepared to have him marry Tamar. At the time of Onan’s death, he was not even 10 years old. Tamar, who was older and had an active libido, deserved to be remarried sooner, and when Yehudah did not give him to her she interpreted this as an outright refusal, not a temporary one.

עד יגדל שלה בני, “until my son Shelah becomes of age.” Seeing there was no brother older than Shelah for Tamar to marry, she would have to wait until Shelah was old enough. Had Shelah been of marriageable age already, Yehudah would not have asked Tamar to wait. This verse [the problems caused by Yehudah delaying the levirate marriage of Shelah, Ed.] prompted our sages in Yevamot 39 to say that if a brother evaded performing the levirate union until a younger, under-aged brother had come of age and would perform it in his stead, or if an older brother was overseas and a brother who was present wanted to wait until his older brother returns from overseas and marries this widow, that one does not accept such arguments. The brother who is present and of age must either perform the levirate marriage or release the widow by performing the rite of חליצה, the act of releasing her to marry an outsider, so hat she can get on with her life. In Ruth 1,11 Naomi says to her daughters-in-law: “turn back, my daughters! Why should you go with me? I am too old to be married. Even if I were to be married tonight and I also bore sons, should you wait for them till they grow up?” This suggests that there might be a point in waiting under less extreme circumstances. There are those who hold that Naomi meant that if she had been pregnant at the time she uttered these words she would have encouraged her daughters-in-law to wait till such sons had been old enough to marry. However, people who think along those lines are quite wrong. The Torah in Deut. 25,1 introduces the whole subject of the levirate marriage with the words כי ישבו אחים יחדיו, which the Talmud in Yevamot 17 interprets to mean ”when the brothers concerned are alive at the same time.” In other words, no unborn brother can qualify for observing this legislation for a brother who had died before he was born.

Meaning, he pushed her off with a straw... Rashi is answering the question: Is the verse not self-contradictory? First it is written עד יגדל שלה בני, implying Yehudah intended to give her to Sheilah. Then it is written כי אמר פן ימות, implying Yehudah did not want to do so. Furthermore, when it says כי, how is this a reason for the preceding? If she is a woman whose husbands die, how could Yehudah give her to Sheilah when he comes of age? Therefore Rashi explains that Yehudah offered a pretense when he said עד יגדל שלה בני, for he did not intend that Sheilah should marry her. And when it says כי אמר פן ימות, this is giving the reason for [the verse’s implied statement] why he did not intend for them to marry.

; כי אמר פן ימות , “for he had said (to himself) ‘”lest he die too;”On this line Rashi comments that Yehudah felt that Tamar was one of those women who has a tendency to bring about the death of her husbands. We have a statement to this effect in the Talmud Yevamot 64 as well as in Ketuvot 43, that if two husbands of a woman have died, one risks one’s life if one marries her. Even according to the opinion that such conclusions cannot be drawn unless the same woman had lost three husbands, Yehudah was afraid for the life of his son. The Talmud forbids a potential suitor to marry a woman with such a record.

כי אמר פן ימות FOR HE SAID LEST PERADVENTURE HE DIE — She is a woman of whom it may be presumed that the men she marries will always die young (Genesis Rabbah 85:5).

FOR HE SAID, LEST HE ALSO DIE, LIKE HIS BRETHREN. That is to say, he dismissed her with a paltry reply because he never intended to give her to him in marriage. For he said, Lest he also die, like his brethren, for she has established herself as one whose husbands die young. This is Rashi’s Language.
Now I do not know why Judah, a ruler of his generation, should be shy towards this woman and not tell her, “Go in peace from my house,” and why should he mislead her when she is even forbidden to Shelah, just as the Rabbis have said concerning a married woman:¹⁶⁷Kethuboth 43:2. “Twice establishes a presumption [that the woman is a katlanith — a woman whose husbands die].” However since Judah was angered by her harlotry to the extent of condemning her to be burned, it would appear that he originally did wish her to remain in his family. It is also unreasonable to say that Judah did not hear about how his children sinned against G-d, thus causing Him to deliver them into the hands of their fate, while Tamar was guiltless in their death.¹⁶⁸Ramban thus raises two questions against Rashi’s interpretation. It is obvious that Judah did care to have Tamar in the family, and as for her part in the death of Er and Onan, did not Judah hear how his sons had sinned against G-d, and that Tamar was guiltless?
The correct view appears to me to be that Shelah was fit for the marriage, but his father did not want him to marry Tamar while he was still a youth, lest he commit some sin with her as had his brothers who died young, for they were boys, none of them having attained twelve years¹⁶⁹Seder Olam 2. See my Hebrew commentary, p. 216. of age. His intention was that when he would mature and would listen to the instruction of his father, he would then give her to him as a wife. But when she had waited a long time and it appeared to her that Shelah had grown up — although in the eyes of his father he was still a boy as he was not yet ten years old and therefore his father was bent on waiting longer — then Tamar, in her craving to give birth from the sacred race, hastened and did this deed.

פן ימות הוא כאחיו, so he would not be so preoccupied with Tamar’s beauty due to his immaturity which had deflected his brothers from the purpose of marriage, and he too would die as a result of this.

כי אמר פן ימות גם הוא, “for he had said: ‘lest he die too.’” He felt that Tamar had demonstrated a tendency to cause the death of her husbands. There is an opinion in the Talmud according to which when something occurs successively even only twice we already consider this as an established pattern, i.e. חזקה. This is the way Rashi interprets our verse. Nachmanides questions this, writing that if indeed Yehudah’s fears were based on this consideration why would he not tell Tamar his reason and deceive her by making her think that he would give Shelah to her in due course? According to Rashi, Shelah would be forbidden to marry Tamar as she was a potential killer. This is why Nachmanides explains that actually Shelah would have been a suitable third husband for her under the levirate marriage legislation. Yehudah simply did not want Shelah to marry until he had matured more as otherwise he might become guilty of the same sin which had caused the death of his brothers. When Tamar noticed that although Shelah had matured in the interval her father-in-law had still not given him to her in marriage, she decided to take a different route to secure issue from the family of Yaakov/Yehudah.

עד יגדל שילה, “until Sheylah would have come of age.” Yehudah felt that once Sheylah would mature, he would be wise enough not to repeat the sins of his older brothers who had died. An alternate exegesis of this paragraph: Yehudah wanted to wait until Sheylah would grow up, in her father’s house by which time, hopefully, Sheylah would have married someone else and would have produced children from such a marriage. Once that had occurred, Yehudah was willing to let Tamar marry him as he would have no reason that his semen would given to Tamar in order to keep alive the name of his deceased brothers, would at the same time destroy his own future.