2:3–4  These verses introduce the five sons of Judah, the first three, Er, Onan and Shelah, being the sons of the Canaanite woman, the daughter of Shua, whom Judah took as his wife, and Perez and Zerah being the twin sons of Tamar, Judah’s daughter-in-law. Behind this short summary of Judah’s sons is, of course, the very enigmatic narrative in Genesis 38. It tells the story—amid the narrative of the highly exemplary other son of Israel, Joseph (Gen. 37–50)—of this ancestor who fathered twin brothers from his daughter-in-law, Tamar. This happened after the ancestor did not satisfy her legal rights, and she thus disguised herself as a prostitute to claim those rights. An anticlimax in the patriarchal history, one would say! Surprisingly enough, this very Judah is the father of the lineage un…