About three months later, Judah was told, “Your daughter-in-law Tamar has been a prostitute—look, she’s even pregnant by prostitution.” “Bring her out!” Judah said, “and let her be burned.”
But God came to Abimelech in a dream at night and said to him, “Behold, you are as good as dead, because of the woman whom you have taken—since she is a married woman.”
So now, return the man’s wife, for he is a prophet. And let him pray for you and you will live. But if you do not return her, know that you will surely die—you and all who are yours.”
Then Abimelech called to Abraham and said to him, “What have you done to us, and how have I sinned against you, that you brought great sin upon me and my kingdom? You’ve done to me things that should not be done!”
Then Nathan said to David, “You are the man! Thus says Adonai, God of Israel: It is I who anointed you king over Israel, and it is I who delivered you from the hand of Saul.
I find more bitter than death the woman who is a snare, whose heart is a trap, and whose hands are chains. He who pleases God will escape her, but a sinner will be captured by her.
“Indeed, long ago I broke your yoke and tore off your bonds. You said, ‘I will not serve!’ Instead, on every high hill and under every green tree you sprawled out as a prostitute.
“If a man divorces his wife and she leaves him to be with another man, will he return to her again? Would not such a land be totally polluted? You are a prostitute with many lovers. Now are you returning to Me?” It is a declaration of Adonai.
Then Adonai said to me in the days of King Josiah: “Have you seen what backsliding Israel did? She went up on every high mountain and under every green tree, and there she committed adultery.
I noted that when backsliding Israel committed adultery I sent her away and gave her a certificate of divorce. Yet, unfaithful Judah, her sister, did not fear. Instead she also went and committed adultery.
You built your lofty place at the head of every street. You made your beauty an abomination. You spread your legs for everyone passing by and multiplied your harlotry.
They will set your houses on fire and execute judgment on you in the sight of many women. So I will cause you to stop your harlotry. You will never again pay for a lover.
Or else I will strip her naked and expose her as on the day she was born. Then I will make her like a wilderness. Yes, I will make her like desert land, and I will let her die of thirst.
Then I said to her: “For many days you must stay with me. You must not practice prostitution. You must not have a man, and I will be the same toward you.”
Though you, Israel, are a prostitute, let Judah not become guilty. But do not come to Gilgal or go up to Beth-aven, and do not swear: ‘As Adonai lives!’
“The man who commits adultery with another man’s wife, who commits adultery with his friend’s wife, both the adulterer and the adulteress should surely be put to death.
But his concubine played the harlot against him, and went away from him to her father’s house to Bethlehem in Judah, and was there for a period of four months.