After wrestling with the angel, Jacob limps for the rest of his life.
After Judah is humbled by Tamar, he may not have a literal limp, but I think his soul is marked going forward. In other words, he “limps.”
This moral humbling will be important as the story of the sons of Israel unfolds.
As we’re following the story told in Genesis 37-50, we are watching to see how an important question will get answered:
Who will lead the family after Jacob is gone?
In Genesis 37, Joseph seems to be the leading candidate, since he is both his father’s favorite and the most gifted. As the chapter closes, however, Joseph finds himself sold into Egyptian slavery—not a promising situation.
And then Genesis 38 seems to be a non sequitur—we want to follow Joseph’s journey, and instead we’re given—without any explanation—this strange story about Judah, #4 of Jacob’s 12 sons. Here’s why:
We’re shown something important about Judah that will help us understand if he should or should not be the leader after Jacob.
Reading along the story of Judah and his daughter-in-law Tamar so far, what do you think?
Is this how a man should behave?
The first page of the New Testament--which is the first page of Matthew's Gospel--begins with what seems the most boring way possible: a genealogy (!). The problem is (and I mean no offense) that we are too illiterate to know the stories behind the names. Matthew's first readers were probably Jewish, and to them each name was a hyperlink to an amazing story from their history. (To cite just one example, read the truly scandalous story about Tamar, mentioned in Matthew 1:3 as one of the foremothers of Jesus.) What this genealogy does is something very important: it shows that Jesus came from a particular people in a particular part of the world. Jesus was Jewish, a son of Abraham, an Israelite.This point cannot be overstated: God chose one particular family to be his means to save the world, and when the time was right, God came as a baby in a particular manger in Bethlehem. God uses the ordinary realities of everyday life as part of his ultimate plan.This means that God wants to use your ordinary decisions today as part of his plan. Either you can be working with God, or against him. Which will it be today?
I wrote about this passage in August 2018. Also, the Bible Project has a truly excellent post on Matthew's Genealogy.