The last laugh
Marcelle Hanselaar’s etching, part of a series made in 2022, presents a scene from Genesis 38: Judah, son of the Israelite patriarch Jacob, sees a veiled woman by the roadside and assumes she’s a prostitute. “Come,” he says, “let me come in to you.” For payment he promises her a goat. The veiled woman accepts – on condition that she can hold on to his signet, cord, and staff as a guarantee of that goat. When Judah later tries to send the payment, the locals deny the existence of any prostitutes. Months later, rumor reaches Judah that his daughter-in-law Tamar, a childless widow, is pregnant as a result of whoredom. He condemns her to be burned, but Tamar is a few moves ahead in her chess game. She returns the signet and the cord and the staff with a message: “It was the owner of these who made me pregnant.”
Under the tradition of levirate marriage, Tamar had a right to bear children with Judah’s youngest son (brother of her first two husbands, both slain by God) which Judah had denied her. When Judah realizes that Tamar has used him to get pregnant, he basically accepts that she was just taking what was legally hers.