Married successively to Er and Onan, sons of Yehudah, both of whom died without children (Genesis 38:6–10)
When Yehudah withheld his third son Shelah from her, Tamar disguised herself and conceived by Yehudah himself (Genesis 38:12–26)
Yehudah declared 'she has been more righteous than I' (Genesis 38:26) on recognizing his own seal, cord, and staff
Bore twins, Zerach and Peretz — Zerach's hand emerged first and was marked with a scarlet thread, but Peretz 'broke through' and was born first (Genesis 38:27–30), giving him his name
Named in the genealogy of Yeshua (Matthew 1:3) — one of only four women named in Matthew's genealogy, alongside Rahav, Ruth, and Bathsheva
Invoked as a blessing in Ruth 4:12: 'let your house be like the house of Peretz, whom Tamar bore to Yehudah'
“More righteous than I — mother of Peretz and Zerach, named in Matthew's genealogy”
Traditional note: Genesis 38 does not explicitly state Tamar's ethnic origin, unlike Rahav (explicitly Canaanite of Jericho, Joshua 2) or Ruth (explicitly Moabite, Ruth 1:4). This dataset's own schema definition for 'gentile_origin' names Tamar alongside Rahav, Ruth, and Asenat as a 'named non-Israelite forebear who joined the covenant line', and this entry follows that classification — but the textual basis is less direct than for Rahav or Ruth, and is flagged here for the maintainer's awareness. A counter-tradition in Genesis Rabbah (63:13 and elsewhere) identifies Tamar as a daughter of Shem (sometimes equated with Malki-Tzedek) — i.e. NOT a gentile at all; this is 'Tradition' and is not the basis for this entry's gentile_origin classification. Er and Onan, her first two husbands (Genesis 38:6–10, Genesis 46:12, Numbers 26:19, both 'slain by Yah' and dying without recorded descendants per the text), now have their own entries in this dataset (ids 'er' and 'onan', Batch E2, both genealogy_position 24, line_status 'Messianic-line-sibling').
