¹¹ Then Judah said to his daughter-in-law Tamar, “Remain a widow in your father’s house until my son Shelah grows up.”^(A) For he thought, “He might die too, like his brothers.” So Tamar went to live in her father’s house.

Preserving the Family Line

⁵ “When brothers live on the same property^[a] and one of them dies without a son, the wife of the dead man may not marry a stranger outside the family. Her brother-in-law is to take her as his wife, have sexual relations with her, and perform the duty of a brother-in-law for her.