Lives of Scripture

Er was Judah's firstborn son, born to Judah and his Canaanite wife, the daughter of Shua (Genesis 38:3; called Bath-shua in 1 Chronicles 2:3). When Er grew up, Judah took a wife for him named Tamar (38:6). Scripture gives no details of any specific deed, only a stark verdict: "Er, Judah's firstborn, was evil in the sight of the LORD, so the LORD took his life" (38:7). No explanation of what made him wicked is given -- only the bare fact of divine judgment falling swiftly on him, leaving Tamar a childless widow. Er's death sets the entire remainder of Genesis 38 in motion: under the custom of levirate marriage, Judah gave Tamar to his second son Onan to raise up offspring for his dead brother, a duty Onan refused to fulfill and for which he too was struck dead (38:8-10); Judah's reluctance to give Tamar his third son afterward led to Tamar's desperate deception of Judah himself, and ultimately to the birth of Perez and Zerah, ancestors in the line that leads to David and, in Matthew's genealogy, to Christ (38:11-30; Matthew 1:3). Er himself never speaks or acts in the narrative -- his entire recorded life consists of a marriage, an unspecified evil, and a divine judgment -- but his death is the hinge on which one of Genesis's most consequential family stories turns.