Hello and welcome to the scriptures a real podcast, the podcast where we look at elements of the scriptures that have become

very real to us and thus have allowed us to draw more power out of the scriptures. I'm your host,

Kerry Mealstein, and this is one of those little shortcasts where I just, I don't have a guest.

I just want to talk about a couple of things myself. And today, we're going to talk about a story in the scriptures

that we've referred to actually a number of times. We referred to this story in my interview

with Camille Frank Olson. And I believe both of our interviews about Joseph, one with Stephen

Smooten, one with Joe Spencer. They've not both been released at this point.

I think only one has been, but the other will come next week. But we keep referencing this odd

little chapter, chapter 38, that's smack dab in the middle of the Joseph story. So chapter 37 is

where the Joseph story starts. And then you get this interruption with the story of Judah and then you're back to the Joseph

story. And I would say in a way it serves as a foil that is highlighting the difference between

Judah who will sleep what he thinks sleep with a harlot in this story and Joseph who runs away

from a woman who is trying to sleep with him in the following chapter. And so there's a

real kind of literary device here called a foil where you're contrasting the two characters

to learn something of them. But I think it's more than that. It's also, as we've mentioned in some

of the other episodes, this is a time where I think we start to see a

growth in Judah. He's not painted particularly well in this picture, but I think there's growth

that we see. And it's also important to investigate this story because both David and the

Savior will come from the union that is discussed in this story. So let's jump into it and see if we can bring into and do it a number of elements that

for me, when I learned this about the ancient world, it just made it come alive for me.

And I said, ah, that's what's going on here.

So we have Judah at the beginning of chapter 38.

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