t12papocrypha
Testament of Judah 12
Judah recounts his unknowing union with Tamar at the gate of Chozeb — his staff, girdle, and crown given as pledges, his intent to slay her checked when the pledges exposed him as the father. He names the cause plainly: wine clouded recognition, beauty deceived, and Amorite custom framed the setting. Yet he also names what overrode his own judgment — it was from the Lord. Tamar's conception stands preserved by that divine check. The episode closes with the household descending into Egypt because of famine, placing Judah's confession inside the Joseph-of-Egypt gathering arc.
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And after these things, while Tamar was a widow, she heard after two years that I was going up to shear my sheep; then she decked herself in bridal array, and sat over against the city by the gate. For it is a law of the Amorites, that she who is about to marry sit in fornication seven days by the gate. I therefore, being drunk at the waters of Chozeb, recognised her not by reason of wine; and her beauty deceived me, through the fashion of her adorning. And I turned aside to her, and said, I would enter in to thee. And she said to me, What wilt thou give me? And I gave her my staff, and my girdle, and my royal crown; and I lay with her, and she conceived. I then, not knowing what she had done, wished to slay her; but she privily sent my pledges, and put me to shame. And when I called her, I heard also the secret words which I spoke when lying with her in my drunkenness; and I could not slay her, because it was from the Lord. For I said, Lest haply she did it in subtlety, and received the pledge from another woman: but I came near her no more till my death, because I had done this abomination in all Israel. Moreover, they who were in the city said that there was no bride in the city, because she came from another place, and sat for awhile in the gate, and she thought that no one knew that I had gone in to her. And after this we came into Egypt to Joseph, because of the famine. Forty and six years old was I, and seventy and three years lived I there.
