Genesis Genesis 38:1-30
Genesis 38 is no digression. Wedged between Joseph's selling and Joseph's faithfulness, it turns on the same two-word demand — 'recognize, please' — that the brothers once made of Jacob. Now Tamar makes it of Judah, and the deceiver confesses: 'she is more righteous than I.' Through his sin and her risk, the messianic line is carried.
Genesis Genesis 29:1-35
Genesis 29 turns the deceiver into the deceived, names four foundational tribes through a hated wife, and lends the Septuagint a single Greek verb — apokuliō — that will reappear at exactly one other scene: the empty tomb.
Genesis Gen 49:5–12; 1 Chr 5:1–2; Heb 7:11–17
Reuben forfeited the firstborn inheritance. Simeon was cursed alongside Levi and then disappeared from Moses's final tribal blessing. Levi, cursed for violence, became the priesthood. Judah was fourth and received the scepter. 1 Chronicles 5:1-2 names the three-way split. Hebrews 7 argues that Jesus's Judah-descent requires a priesthood from outside Aaron's line — recovering through Melchizedek what the Torah had divided.