JUDAH (rt-Ril', celebrated; Sept. 'Ioaas), fourth son of Ja'co'b and Leah P.c. 1755). The narrative in Genesis brings this patriarch more be fore the reader, and makes known more of his his tory and character, than it does in the case of any other of the twelve sons of Jacob, with the sin,gle exception of Joseph. It is indeed chiefly in con nection with Joseph that the facts respecting Judah transpire ; and as they have already been given in the articles JAcon and JOSEPH, it iS only necessary to indicate them shortly in this place. It was Ju dah's advice that the brethren followed when they sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites, instead of taking, his life. By the light of his subsequent actions we can see that his conduct on this occasion arose from a generous impulse, although the form of the question he put to them has been sometimes held to suggest an interested motive What profit is it if we slay our brother and conceal his blood ? Come, let us sell hitn,' etc. (Gen. xxxvii. 26, 27).
Not long after this Judah withdrew from the pa ternal tents, and went to reside at Adullam, in the country which aftenvards bore his name. Here he married a woman of Canaan, called Shuala, and had by her three sons, Er, Onan, and Shelah. When the eldest of these sons became of fit age, he was mar ried to a woman named Tamar, but soon after died. As he died childless, the patriarchal law, after wards adopted into the Mosaic code (Deut. xxv. 6), required him to bestow upon the widow his second son. This he did; but as Onan also soon died childless, Judah became reluctant to bestow his only surviving son upon this woman, and put her off with the excuse that he was not yet of suffi cient age. Tamar accordingly remained in her father's house at Adullam. She had the usual passion of Eastern women for offspring, and could not endure the stigma of having been twice mar ried without bearing children, while the law pre cluded her from contracting any alliance but that which Judah withheld her from completing.
Meanwhile Judah's wife died, and after the time of mourning had expired, he went, accompanied by his friend Hirah, to attend the shearing of his sheep at Timnath in the same neighbourhood. These circumstances suggested to Tamar the strange thought of connecting herself with Judah himself, under the guise of a loose woman.
Having waylaid him on the road to Timnath, she succeeded in her object, and when the conse quences began to be manifest in the person of Tamar, Judah was highly enraged at her crime, and, exercising the powers which belonged to him as the head of the family she had dishonoured, he commanded her to be brought forth, and com mitted to the flames as an adulteress. But when ;Ile appeared, she produced the ring, the bracelet, and the staff, which he had left in pledge with her ; and put him to confusion by declaring that they belonged to the father of her coming offspring.
Judah acknowledged them to be his, and confessed that lie had been wrong in withholding Shelah from her. The result of this painful affair was the birth of two sons, Zeraft and Pharez, from vvhom, with Shelah, the tribe of Judah descended. Pharez was the ancestor of the line from which David, the kings of Judah, and Jesus came (Gen. xxxviii. ; xlvi. 12 ; 1 Chron. 3-5 ; Matt. i. 3 ; Luke 33).
These circumstances seem to have disg,usted Judah with his residence in towns ; for we find him ever afterwards at his father's tents. IIis ex perience of life, and the strength of his character. appear to have given him much influence with Jacob ; and it was chiefly from confidence in him that the aged father at length consented to allow Benjamin to go down to Egypt. That this confi. dence was not misplaced has already been shewn [JosEPH]; and there is not in the whole range of literature a finer piece of true natural doquence than that in which Judah offers himself to re main as a bond-slave in the place of Benjamin, for whose safe return he had made himself respon sible to his father. The strong emotions which it raised in Joseph disabled him from keeping up longer the disguise he had hitherto maintained, and there are few who have read it without being, like him, moved even to tears.
We hear nothing- more of Judah till he received, along with his brothers, the final blessing of his father, which was conveyed in lofty language, glancing far into futurity, and strongly indicative of the high destinies which awaited the tribe that was to descend from him.
Aa'denduin.—ln character, Judah appears to have been ambitious, designing, and somewhat unscrupulous. He acquired at an early period considerable ascendancy over his brethren, and some influence also over his father. His tact and talent were displayed in obtaining Jacob's con sent to send Benjamin to Egypt, and still more iu pleading for him before Joseph. Judah was, fact, the leading man in Jacob's household ; and he prepared the way for making his tribe the lead ing tribe in Israel. There seems to be an acknow ledgment of his ascendancy, and a prediction of its continuance, in Jacob's blessing :—` Judah is a lion's whelp . . . who shall rouse him ? The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a law giver from between his feet, until Shiloh come' (Gen. xlix. 9, to). The knowledge that the Shiloh —the Great Deliverer—was to spring from this tribe, doubtless tended to increase its influence.— J. L. P.