Genesis 38:23

Then Judah said to Hirah, “All right, that woman can keep the necklace with my stamp on it, and my walking stick. I tried to keep my promise to that woman. Yes, I gave you a young goat to take to her. But you didn’t find her. If you go and look for her again, everybody will laugh at us. So she can just keep my things.”

Plain English Version

In The King James Version

And Judah said, Let her take it to her, lest we be shamed: behold, I sent this kid, and thou hast not found her.

In Context

22So Hirah went back to Judah, and he said, “I didn’t find that woman. And the men that live in that place, they said to me, ‘There isn’t any woman here that sleeps with men for pay.’”

243 months later, somebody said to Judah, “Your dead son’s wife Tamar, she did a bad thing. She slept with a man that isn’t her husband. And now there is a baby growing inside her.” Judah wanted to punish Tamar for doing that. So he said, “Go and get her. Put her on a fire, and burn her until she dies.”

Read all of Genesis 38

Cross References

2 Samuel 12:9But you didn’t take notice of God’s word. You did something that is really wrong. God says it is really bad. You took Uriah’s wife, and you killed him. Yes, you sent Uriah into the middle of the fight. You knew that the Ammon mob would kill him. So really, you murdered him to get his wife for yourself.

Romans 6:21And what did you get after you did bad things? You got shame, that’s all. And you know that people that do those bad things have to die.

Ephesians 5:12Those people do bad things when nobody can see them. Those things are so bad that if we talk about them, we feel shame.

Matthew Henry on Genesis 38:13-24

12 And in process of time the daughter of Shuah Judah's wife died; and Judah was comforted, and went up unto his sheepshearers to Timnath, he and his friend Hirah the Adullamite. 13 And it was told Tamar, saying, Behold thy father in law goeth up to Timnath to shear his sheep. 14 And she put her widow's garments off from her, and covered her with a veil, and wrapped herself, and sat in an open place, which is by the way to Timnath; for she saw that Shelah was grown, and she was not given unto him to wife. 15 When… Read the whole commentary →

This Verse In Other Editions

Study Genesis 38:23