Chapters 37 and 38 in Genesis offer us back-to-back stories of people deceiving others but with an unexpected twist: One deceiver is praised and the other is not. Looking at the motifs of liberation and reversal throughout salvation history can help us understand why.
In the first story in Genesis 37, Judah and his brothers, having tired of their brother Joseph’s preening and condescension, sell him into slavery. To cover their tracks, they dip Joseph’s famous “coat of many colors”—a present from their father Jacob to his favorite son—in goat’s blood, lying to Jacob that wild animals have killed Joseph. Unsurprisingly, given that this betrayal and deception tear their family apart, Judah and his brothers’ actions are deemed “evil” (Gen. 50:20).
But in the next chapter, Genesis 38, we see another case of trickery. Judah now has three sons of his own: Er, Onan, and Shelah. His oldest, Er, marries a woman named Tamar but dies before they have any children. According to the custom of the time, Judah gives his second son, Onan, to Tamar to produce a child for Er, but Onan famously spills “his seed on the ground.” When God punishes Onan for this, striking him dead (we’ll set aside, for this discussion, any ethical or religious debates around this detail), Judah then promises Tamar she can marry his youngest son, Shelah, when he is old enough. But when Shelah comes of age, Judah reneges on this promise.
Whatever Judah’s reasoning (perhaps he thought Tamar was bad luck?), the outcome leaves Tamar in a vulnerable situation with neither husband nor children. Without children, she faces an uncertain future, not to mention inevitable contempt from her contemporaries. She needs a child, if for no other reason than her own survival.
So Tamar takes matters into her own hands: She disguises herself as a prostitute and seduces Judah. Judah has nothing with which to pay her, however, and so he gives her his ring, necklace, and staff as collateral.
Three months pass, and then Tamar reveals she is pregnant. Judah orders her to be executed, since she must have committed adultery. As Tamar is brought out for execution, she sends a message to Judah: “I am pregnant by the man who owns these.” When the messenger presents Judah’s ring, necklace, and staff, Judah recognizes them and responds, “She is more righteous than I, since I wouldn’t give her to my son Shelah.”
Tamar’s and Judah’s actions and lies may horrify us today, but scripture deems Tamar righteous, while Judah’s actions are condemned. In this “tale of two cons,” why is Tamar’s “con” considered righteous?
On one level, Tamar is doing her best under impossible circumstances to fulfill her responsibility to her dead husband: to raise a child in his name. While the customs of the time permitted her to have intercourse with her father-in-law to fulfill that responsibility, we rightly recoil at such a notion—and later scriptures expressly forbid incestuous work-arounds (e.g., Lev. 18:15). On another level, though, Tamar’s story reveals God’s preferential option for the vulnerable.
The idea of a “righteous con” is not limited to the Judah/Tamar story. The Hebrew scriptures are peppered with such stories of how God works through human flaws, trauma, and even trickery to bring about the kingdom of heaven. In Exodus, for example, the Egyptian midwives concoct stories of how Jewish women expeditiously deliver their babies, rescuing Moses from Pharaoh’s pogrom. In the Book of Joshua, Rahab the harlot hides the Israelite spies under hay bales, telling her Canaanite comrades that the spies have left. Also in Joshua, the Gibeonites disguise themselves as travelers to trick Joshua into making a treaty with them, thereby ensuring they are not massacred.
Even God gets in on the action in 1 Kings 22. The wicked northern king Ahab, husband of the infamous Jezebel, is angry because the prophet Micaiah won’t agree with other court prophets that the king will defeat the Arameans. Micaiah then orders Ahab to “hear the word of the Lord” regarding a vision where God and “all the host of heaven” discussed Ahab’s coming battle:
The Lord said, “Who will entice Ahab, so that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-Gilead?” Then one said one thing, and another said another, until a spirit came forward and stood before the Lord, saying, “I will entice him.” “How?” the Lord asked him. He replied, “I will go out and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.” Then the Lord said, “You are to entice him, and you shall succeed; go out and do it.” (1 Kings 22:20–22)
Micaiah concludes to Ahab, “Now therefore behold, the Lord has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets; the Lord has declared disaster for you.” Ahab, knowing all this, still ignores Micaiah and goes off to battle, where the Arameans defeat and kill him.
If you’re tempted to dismiss the idea of a “righteous con” as limited to the Hebrew scriptures, consider Jesus’ parable of the unrighteous steward in Luke 16. There, Jesus praises the bookkeeper who, when he learns he’s about to be fired for dishonesty, cooks the books in one final con, reducing the debts of the employer’s debtors, putting them instead into his own debt as he faces unemployment.
It is important to note that the powerless or disenfranchised (often women) are the ones who commit these “righteous cons,” using the only power they have to protect themselves. When the powerful engage in trickery—such as when David cynically sends Uriah to the front lines to die in battle so David can marry Uriah’s widow, Bathsheba—that’s another matter. The Lord judges David’s actions severely.
So is the Bible telling us we should feel comfortable being con artists, as long as we’re poor or downtrodden? Not exactly. But these stories, woven into salvation history as they are, should provide comfort and give hope to people in difficult situations today, reminding them that God is on their side.
The overarching theme of these tales of trickery connects with basic Catholic moral principles, as we know them today. One such principle is that it is no sin if a starving person steals the food they need to survive. Another is that no one is required to reveal truth to those who intend to harm them. To the theoretical question, popular in introductory philosophy classes, “Is it okay to lie to Nazis to protect the Jews in your attic?” the answer is “Yes, unequivocally yes.” Today, this might translate into: Yes, it’s okay to lie to ICE agents.
These “righteous cons” in the Bible contribute to a framework of Christian morality that puts people’s needs ahead of rules, a principle that’s perhaps most clearly explicated in the Beatitudes in the Gospel of Matthew. They are also part of a broader pattern of God bringing about salvation through surprising reversals. One of the babies the midwives save through their deception, for example, is Moses, Israel’s liberator and uber-prophet.
As for Rahab, she not only saves the Gibeonites; she also gives birth to Boaz, an ancestor of King David. And out of David’s lineage, Jesus is born. As a result of Tamar’s deception, she too gives birth to a baby, Perez, who is also David’s ancestor—and Jesus’. These women’s “righteous cons” are links in salvation history itself.
Image: Wikimedia Commons, Judah and Tamar
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