Genesis 38:6

Summary

Judah takes a wife for his firstborn son Er, and this woman's name is Tamar. The verse introduces Tamar as a character by naming her explicitly at the sentence's end.

Key words

• va-yiqqach ("and he took", H3947G) — qal narrative verb with vav; marks the next sequential action in the story, with Judah as subject.
• ishah ("a wife", H0802H) — feminine singular noun, the direct object of the taking; unmarked/indefinite, "a wife" rather than a specific named woman at this point in the clause.
• bekhoro ("his firstborn", H1060 + H9023) — construct noun with pronominal suffix "his," identifying Er's status relative to Judah as the first son.
• u-shemah ("and her name", H8034 + H9024) — construct noun "name of" with suffix "her," introducing the naming clause that identifies the wife.
• Tamar ("Tamar", H8559G) — proper name, placed in final position, the last word of the verse.

What the text says

The verse is built from two linked clauses joined by the narrative vav. The first clause, va-yiqqach Yehudah ishah le-Er bekhoro ("and Judah took a wife for Er his firstborn"), places Judah as the grammatical subject performing the action of acquiring a wife; the preposition le ("for", H9005) before Er marks Er as the beneficiary rather than the one performing the action of taking. This construction shows Judah as the agent arranging the marriage, with Er's role limited to being the recipient of the arrangement, marked by bekhoro ("his firstborn") which specifies Er's position in the family line.

The second clause, u-shemah Tamar ("and her name [was] Tamar"), is a simple naming formula using the construct noun shem ("name") with the third-person feminine suffix -ah ("her"). This clause has no verb; the naming is expressed through the noun-plus-suffix construct alone, a common Biblical Hebrew pattern for introducing a character's name after they have already been referred to pronominally (here, implicitly, as "a wife"). The placement of Tamar at the very end of the verse gives her name a certain emphasis as the closing word of the sentence.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the clause as ᾗ ὄνομα Θαμάρ ("to whom [was] the name Tamar"), using a relative pronoun ᾗ instead of a possessive construction directly tied to a suffix, but conveys the same naming sense as the Hebrew u-shemah. The Vulgate's nomine Thamar ("by name, Tamar") also preserves the naming formula but as an ablative phrase rather than a full clause. The Vulgate additionally opens with Dedit autem Judas uxorem ("Judah gave a wife"), using "gave" where the Hebrew verb is yiqqach ("he took", H3947G), describing Judah's action from the angle of giving the wife to Er rather than taking/acquiring her for him.