A COMMENTARY ON MATT.1:3-6
Why is she the honoured woman? - she,
the non-jew, dishonoured as she was
by Onan, by Judah, who, nonetheless,
sits as a prostitute in the gate
and captures Judah in her net
which is
God's net
for she thus becomes
a prototype of the Virgin,
ancestor of God.
Not many Christian women called Tamar,
still less Rahab
or Bathsheba
but plenty of Ruths - the non-Jew, she who tricked
Boaz into becoming
an ancestor of God.
And why should Matthew bother telling us
what we wouldn't otherwise know
that Rahab, the non-Jew, prostitute and traitor to her people
was Boaz's mother, thus
Rahab too
was an ancestor of God,
together with Bathsheba,
sleeping with her husband's
murderer - all
prototypes of the Virgin
because they saw (Ephrem dixit)
in the bosom of the men
lusting after them the seed
that would fashion the flesh
that would save
their father, Adam.
So God was made by so many
lies and deceits
as Rahab
was the prototype
of Mary
and Joshua
the genocidal
is the prototype of Jesus
and you're going to tell me that some
spiritually minded human being
made that up?
It is too great,
too great for any
human imagining,
more than the logic of tragedy
is the absolute, unwavering,
almost, one might say, crazed
purposefulness of God.