A long stretch of the Book of Genesis, featuring the Founding Fathers of the Faith, often reads like a trashy but imaginative piece of pulp fiction.  There is bad sex on every page.
At times it's embarrassing.  I catch myself feeling offended by the bizarre behavior of these ancient pilgrims, who, incidently, are later enshrined by the Hebrew preacher into God's Hall of Faithful Fame (Hebrews 11).  It's hard to accept that they could somehow be models of faith without being paradigms of virtue.  Learning of the repeated moral failures of the Bible's "Good Guys" is like hearing on the playground that your older sister is the town tramp.  It kicks you right in the gut.
Give the Bible credit.  It does not sugarcoat the life and times of its primary characters.  I guess the problem is mine in that I expect my heroes to have a little better sense of decency.  It's striking to learn that their lives were as complicated and messy as our own.  I would rather not have to pause after each story and shake my finger at my Bible shouting, "Shame on you!" 
Granted, Abraham and Isaac maintained some semblance of order, but things really fell apart with Jacob.
After a conniving piece of deception in which he stold his older brother's birthright, he fled north to Uncle Laban's farm to find a wife and settle down.  He tumbled instantly in love with beautiful Rachel, the younger sister of Leah – both of whom were his first cousins.  He got snookered into a deal with Laben to work seven years in exchange for the hand of Rachel in marriage.  Then on his wedding night, Laben exchanged daughters under the sheets, and he woke up to find Leah naked beside him.  In the process of working seven more years for Rachel – Again! – he fathered children by both their personal maids.            Too cozy for me. 
By the time he fled <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Haran and made it back to Canaan, he had a dozen sons and a daughter.  Dinah, born to him by Leah, went out one day to make some new friends among the daughters of the land and was raped by Hamor the Hivite. 
Her brothers retaliated by tricking the Hivite men to embrace adult circumcision in exchange for the privilege of exchanging sons and daughters.  On the day after the procedure, when the Hivite men were too sore to move, the sons of Jacob exercised their revenge and killed them all and looted their stuff.
Odds are that with twelve sons, dad and mom are going to have to put up with some indiscretion.  Maybe they weren't such bad boys, after all.  Maybe it was that there were just so many of them.
It gets worse.  Ten of the older boys, now accustomed to shedding blood, grew irritated at their little brother Joseph's favored status with their father, and decide one afternoon to kill the little tattle-tale.
Instead, they hawked him to a caravan of traders hauling trinkets from China to market at Dollar Stores in Egypt.  These not-too-distant relatives in turn sold him into slavery, where the captain of Pharaoh's bodyguard purchased him as a houseboy.
The writer of Genesis wants to tell the rest of the story regarding Joseph's exploits in Egypt, but first we must learn more of Judah, the fourth son of Jacob and Leah, who saved Joseph's life a few verses earlier by hatching the plan to peddle him to the Midianites.
The historical account of Judah taking a wife at the beginning of chapter 38 is so paraphrased I'm not sure how it really happened:
"Judah departed from his brothers, and visited a certain Adullamite (did he come from a long line of dull mites?) whose name was Hirah.  And Judah saw there a daughter of a certain Canaanite whose name was Shua, and he took her and went in to her.  So she conceived and bore a son and he named him Er (I'm guessing it's short for Error)" (38:1-3).
Sounds rather rough and unromantic to me.  Where are the flowers and chocolates?  What about courting?  How about rings and things and a reception dinner?  What's up with sex on the first date?
Judah sounds like the kind of man you pray your daughter does not bring home for the weekend.
Quickly, they produced two more sons, Onan and Shelah (why not just name him Sue?).
Er grew old enough to get a wife of his own, and Judah, somewhere, somehow secured Tamar, another local Canaanite girl, as his bride.
"But Er was evil in the sight of the Lord, so the Lord took his life" (vs. 7).
I told you his full name was Error.
As custom would have it, Judah forced Er's younger brother Onan to father a child by Tamor so Er's name could carry on.  Onan didn't like the idea of producing a child that wasn't his own, so he faked the sex part "and spilled his seed on the ground."
"This displeased the Lord, and He took his life also" (vs. 8-10).
Have you ever met such a bunch of dysfunctional folks?
Now Judah may have been dysfunctional, but he wasn't stupid, and he refused to throw his third son into The Black Widow's web.
He sent Tamar back to her father with a cheap promise that when Shelah was old enough to marry, he would come calling.  He soon forgot the pledge, but Tamar remembered.
She got wind of a report that Judah's wife had died, and he was on his way to meet his old dull friend Hirah at Timnah to shear sheep.
Tamar exchanged her mourning outfit for a slinky evening dress favored by local prostitutes.  She put a veil over her face to hide her true identity and waited for sex-starved Judah to pass her station.
True to form, he stopped and made inquiry, and the two settled on a goat in exchange for sex!  However, Judah didn't have a goat on him, but promised to bring one on the way back down the trail.
Tamar, not to be fooled again, took advantage of the aroused Judah and received from him his seal, cord, and staff – all the important items used to mark your stuff – as a pledge to return.
Men, hungry for sex, will do the stupidest things.  They would do better to think with their brains.
"He went in to her, and she conceived by him" (vs. 18).
Then she disappeared.  But it's hard to stay disappeared when you're eight months pregnant.  The adultery police, ever on the scene protecting the neighborhood from bad sex on the part of others, reported to Judah that the little whore Tamar was knocked-up.  Judah, in a classic fit of self-righteous indignation, boldly declared to the crowd: "Let's burn her at the stake!"
On the way to the woodpile, resourceful Tamar flashed Judah's calling cards and retorted: "I'm pregnant thanks to the man to whom these belong!"
Busted in plain sight of his peers!   Tamar's life was sparred, and she gave birth to twin sons – Perez and Zerah.  Judah was the proud papa and grandpapa all at the same time.
Nasty, huh?
And by the way, one of the twins is later mentioned prominently in a very interesting line-up:
"The Book of the Genealogy of JESUS CHRIST, The Son of David, the son of Abraham.
To Abraham was born Isaac; and to Isaac, Jacob; and to Jacob, JUDAH and his brothers; and to Judah was born PEREZ and Zerah by TAMAR, and to Perez was born Hezron…" (Matthew 1: 1-3).
Bizarre, yes, but true.  Jesus, the Savior of the world, was providentially born into the sin-sick, sex-messed family of Judah and Tamar.  Can there be any question that He came humbly to identify with us?
Thank you Jesus for saving sinners like Judah, Tamar, and me!