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Today on OOBT, we start our studies with Joseph being sold into slavery and THEN in the very next chapter we read about his brother Judah, and his daughter-in-law, Tamar, to THEN end our time together back with Joseph… but this time… in prison. What seems like a break in the narrative actually becomes crucial to our understanding of the unfolding metanarrative of scripture found in both stories – Joseph’s + Judah and Tamar (and their eventual inclusion in the lineage of Jesus). Both stories are VERY important after all - to the Bible’s developing storyline that gives us all a glimpse of God’s grace and the amazing ways His promises were fulfilled despite all sorts of bad choices by Judah as well as because of the choices Joseph made while in slavery in Egypt.

That is A LOT of background to unpack a story that is, at its root, a story of God’s faithfulness to a family. God had made a promise to Abraham. He made a promise to Isaac and to Jacob. And at so many turns, the promise appears threatened by someone’s sin. Further proof that God can and does redeem the hardest, most impossible, most complicated stories. Oh, OOBTers…
What an incredible gift that truth is. Amazing. Simply amazing.