Tamar (biblical person)

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Tamar is the name of three women in the Old Testament . There is also a town with the same name .

etymology

The Hebrew personal name תָּמָר tāmār , German 'Tamar' is a plant name and means “ date palm ”. The name has a connotation with fertility and is only proven for feminine namesake. The Septuagint gives the name with Θαμαρ Thamar (or in 2 Sam 13.19  LXX with Θημαρ Thēmar ), the Vulgate with Thamar .

Tamar, daughter-in-law of Judah

Tamar was the daughter-in-law of Judah , the fourth son of Jacob . Their story is reported in Genesis , ( 1 Mos 38  EU ).

At first she was married to He , Judah's Elder, who died without an offspring soon after the marriage. Judah then married her to his second son, Onan , so that he could create offspring for his deceased brother ( levirate marriage ). But Onan refused this and "let the seed fall to the ground and perish". He also died a short time later, and Tamar continued to be childless. Legally, the youngest, Schela , would have had to create offspring for his brothers, but Judah delayed the marriage because he feared that his first two sons would die quickly, and that the last one could also be taken from him. Some time later, after Juda's wife died, Tamar, dressed as a whore , seduced her father-in-law and became pregnant by him.

Tamar and Juda by Jacopo Tintoretto , Madrid, Thyssen-Bornemisza
Tamar and Judah in a 17th century Dutch painting.

Tamar was told: Your father-in-law is going up to Timna to shear the sheep. Then she took off her widow's clothes, put a veil over her and covered herself. Then she sat at the entrance to Enajim , which is on the road to Timna. She had noticed that Shela had grown up, but that no one wanted to give her to him as a wife. Judah saw her and thought she was a prostitute; she had covered her face. So he turned off the path, went to her and said: Let me come to you! He didn't know it was his daughter-in-law. She replied: What will you give me if you can come to me? He said: I'll send you a billy goat from the herd. She replied: You have to leave me a pledge until you send it (Gen 38: 13-17).

As a deposit for the outstanding payment, Judah gave her his signet ring with string and his staff. However, he could not redeem the deposit because the prostitute had disappeared and he was also told that there was never a prostitute in this place. When he later heard that Tamar was pregnant, he wanted to have her killed for fornication . She sent him the pledges, and he realized that she had outsmarted him, but was right because he had denied her a child father. Tamar was pregnant with twins. It was important for the succession which son was born first. During the delivery, a twin reached out and the midwife tied a red thread. However, the hand disappeared again and the boy without a thread was born first. He was called Perez, which means crack or breakthrough. His brother Zerah, with the red thread around his hand, was born after him.

Perez became the father of Hezron and Hamul , King David was descended from Hezron , and so Tamar (as one of four traditional women) entered the family tree of Jesus ( Mt 1,3  EU ).

Thomas Mann gave a literary design of the figure in the 5th main piece by Joseph the breadwinner (also individually, with drawings by Gunter Böhmer , 1956, and later published as a Fischer paperback).

Tamar, daughter of David

According to ( 2 Sam 13,1-22  EU ) Tamar was a full sister of Absalom , her mother was Maacha , the daughter of Talmai (1 Chron. 3, 2). David's oldest living son, Amnon, fell in love with her. He pretended to be ill and had his father send his half-sister to prepare a sick meal for him. He raped her. When she then begged him to ask her father to be her wife, he threw her out of the house.

Her brother Absalom took her in, apparently believing that her father would intervene. The latter became "very angry about this" (v. 21), but did nothing against the Crown Prince. Absalom waited two years before taking revenge: he invited the rapist to a party, waited until Amnon was drunk and had him killed. The deed must be seen in the context of the disputes over David's successor (which led to the revolt of Absalom against his father).

It is also described in a chapter of the King David Report by Stefan Heym . The novel Tamar by Ralph Roger Glöckler tells the story of King David's daughter as today's family drama.

Tamar, granddaughter of David

She was the daughter of Absalom , apparently named after her aunt ( 2 Sam 14.27  EU ). According to an addition in the Septuagint , she was the wife of Rehoboam .

See also

  • Tamara as a female first name

Web links

Commons : Judah and Tamar  - collection of images, videos and audio files

literature