“She is more righteous than I …”
Judah’s wife had died. He wasn’t exactly a young man at this point, but as they say today, “He had needs.” The cult prostitute he encountered on the road to Timnah was
an admittedly sinful but pragmatic way of managing those very normal human
impulses so he could get on with the necessary business of shearing his sheep undistracted.
What Judah didn’t know was that the veiled “prostitute”
was actually his daughter-in-law, the former wife of his eldest son. She
provided her services to him that day in exchange for a young goat from Judah’s flock, which
she never received.
Technically, then, not actually a prostitute. Perhaps not a role model exactly, but nobody in this story
really is.
