Friend: Tamar dressed up like a pagan shrine prostitute to deceive her father-in-law into having sex with her (Gen 38:13ff), and she was considered righteous by doing so (Gen 38:26)
Me: She is "more righteous," but that righteousness is still filthy rags. Judah's point is that his sin is greater than hers, acknowledging that she did sin. He has no grounds from which to accuse her, given his own sin. This might fit into the Esther category of being forced into something. Tamar needed a husband to provide for her, but Judah didn't give her the one available (Shelah). She is forced into this to expose Judah's sin.
Of course, Tamar could have just asked Judah for the man, right? But Judah appears to have decided to keep him from Tamar out of superstitious fear for his (Shelah's) life (Gen 38:11). At this point I think you run into some politics. How can the sin of a tribal leader like Judah be exposed? Not easily. The point is to rebuke Judah's hypocrisy for wanting to burn Tamar, when she did this with /him/!
Okay, so then shouldn't Tamar just have accepted the injustice, instead of solving it this way? I think some gospel accounts come to mind at this point. The persistent widow, the unclean woman with the flow of blood who goes to Jesus in the crowd, the Gentile woman who asks for crumbs from the table, ask-seek-find. The theme is to pursue justice intensely. Yes, but immorally? I think Tamar's actions were sinful, and yet notice what God does with them. Tamar is the first woman mentioned in the New Testament (Matt 1:3), because the child she has through this incestuous, lustful, deceiving, out-of-wedlock incident is Perez, the ancestor of Boaz, David and Jesus.
Friend: Judah's response is more literally "She is righteous, not I." The choice of words doesn't lead us to think she chose the lesser of the two evils, but that she actually did the right/correct/good thing. Unlike other widows of the time, she did not need a husband or son to be cared for since she lived in Judah's household, so she had even less legitimate of a reason to deceive Judah into sleeping with her. More importantly, the text here takes care to clear Judah of incest since it states in vs16 and vs26 that Judah did not know it was Tamar and that he did not sleep with her again. Why would the text give this aspect of the "sin" attention and not the deception or the adultery or the assuming the role of a prostitute (a prostitute of pagan idolatry at that)?
Me: I read the Hebrew differently: "tzedekah mimenu" literally "righteous from me" which last particle is often used as a comparative "more ... than I." Still I would agree with you that the text applauds her action. I would then take this as a form of civil disobedience. To her privileged position, I would agree, but see Judah's position as tribal leader as more relevant. Because of that, his sin HAD to be dealt with or God's plan could be obstructed (think Achan in Ai). Yes, I agree the text clear Judah of incest, but it was still incest on Tamar's part! I don't have all the answers here, but know it is a repeated Scriptural theme of persistent women zealous for righteousness, doing crazy things to confront ungodly men or resolve hard situations.
Friend: If I hear you right it sounds like this instance does not fit neatly into our definitions or boxes of sin. This was my impression of the text also.
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