Week 1 Genesis 1-24
Right after the fiery demolition of Sodom and Gomorrah there’s a pretty interesting family story about Lot and his daughters – an incest story. Then before long there’s a story about one of Jacob’s son’s daughters-in-law taking a proactive (and legally dangerous) I’m-going-to-trick-Judah-into-having-sexual-intercourse-because-he-lied-to-me decision.
A good question with both these stories is why did the author include them in the first place? I think a reasonable answer is that the family stories of Abraham are important enough that the author decided his readers needed to know what’s going on with the clan, black sheep included. And as it turns out the children who are born from these desperation-induced sexual encounters turn out to be sizable players in the story of the bloodline. The author thought the back-story was worth including, and maybe even needed to be.
Notes: the Lot story is a Week 1 story from Genesis 19:30-38; the Judah and Tamar story in Genesis 38 comes in Week 2. One of the things I like about the author is that there’s not much finicky tut-tut-ing in these stories. He reports things. Another example of this: in 35:22 he says that Reuben slept with Bilhah, his father’s concubine, and someone told Jacob about it – and then the author just moves right on to list Jacob’s twelve sons [the words are from the NIV bible].