Tamar

Tamar , in the Bible. 1 Mother of Judah's twin sons Pharez and Zerah. An alternate spelling is Thamar. 2 Daughter of David and Maachah. She was the victim of her half brother Amnon's passion. 3 Daughter of Absalom.

Tamar
1. An entertaining story (Gen. 38) based on the Levirate law, of masculine guilt and female courage: Tamar, daughter-in-law of Judah, having failed to conceive a child for her deceased husband, was equally unsuccessful for his two brothers, who also died. She then discarded her widow's garments, and thus disguised, sat provocatively by the roadside; and in exchange for the promise of a goat, and the interim pledge of a seal, she accepted the sexual proposal of an unsuspecting passerby, who turned out to be her father-in-law. She is afterwards accused of soliciting and sentenced by Judah to be burnt to death—until she displayed the seal. The embarrassed Judah relented. Twins were born to Tamar. It is an aetiological tale about tribal relationships, not an apology for incest. Tamar, as an ancestor of David, appears in the genealogy of Jesus (Matt. 1: 3).

2. A beautiful sister of Absalom; her half-brother Amnon, ‘sick with love’ for her, enticed, raped, and then ejected her (2 Sam. 13). Absolom had Amnon murdered, but David was too fond of Absolom to punish him.

Tamar and Other Poems, collection by Jeffers, published in 1924. The volume contains “The Tower Beyond Tragedy,” “Night,” Shine, Perishing Republic, and The Coast Range Christ. The title piece is a free‐verse narrative, suggested by a passage in II Samuel 13.

An incestuous strain in the Cauldwell family, farmers on the California coast, begins with the passion of David and his sister Helen. Helen dies, but a generation later David's son and daughter by his wife, Lee and Tamar, break the same moral law, and Tamar becomes pregnant. She has desired “a love sterile and sacred as the stars,” and now, terrified, attempts to conceal her sin by taking Will Andrews, a former suitor, as her lover. David's sister Stella becomes a psychic medium for the restless spirit of the dead Helen, impelling Tamar to further crime, for Tamar is jealous of Lee, who is about to leave for France to serve in the World War, and stirs her father to lust. In a paroxysm of contempt and desire, she brings Lee, Will, and David together in her bedroom, and by a fabric of lies sets them to fighting. During this violent encounter, an idiot aunt, Jinny, sets fire to the house, which is destroyed with all its occupants. This dramatic tale, of “passions turned inward, incestuous desires, and a fighting against ghosts,” embodies the poet's allegorical warning to humanity against its growing introversion of values. Ending with desolation after a holocaust, it serves to demonstrate his vision of a culminating disaster, to be desired rather than feared, which threatens mankind because of its foolish and perverse attempt at self‐deification.