Greek word · G2283
Θάμαρ
thamar
Tamar
A Hebrew personal name, Tamar, meaning 'date palm'. Here it comes with ek, 'out of', which in genealogies names the mother: the children came out of her.
Appears once in the Greek New Testament. ·
What it means
From G. Abbott-Smith, A Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament (1922), via STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0).
In depth
- Range of meaning
A Hebrew personal name, Tamar, meaning 'date palm'. Here it comes with ek, 'out of', which in genealogies names the mother: the children came out of her.
- Against the English
'By Tamar' (BSB, ESV, NASB) and 'of Thamar' (KJV) keep the brief Greek wording. 'Whose mother was Tamar' (NIV, NLT) is clearer but loses the shared wording that ties Tamar to the later women and to Mary in 1:16 ('out of whom Jesus was born').
- Used elsewhere in the period
Genesis 38 tells her story. Ruth 4:12 blesses Boaz's house to be 'like the house of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah'. 1 Chr 2:4 already names her in its genealogy: 'Tamar his daughter-in-law bore him Perez and Zerah.' Jewish writers around the time of Jesus honoured her. Philo (On the Virtues 220–222) presents her as a non-Israelite who turned from many gods to the one God. Jubilees 41 and the Testament of Judah 10 make her 'a daughter of Aram' and stress that Judah, not she, was at fault. Later rabbinic tradition (e.g. Babylonian Talmud, Sotah 10b) praises her.
Where it appears
Matthew · 1
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Matthew 1:3 Θαμάρ· Tamar;
Judah was the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar, Perez the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Ram.
Here: Tamar, Judah's twice-widowed daughter-in-law (Genesis 38). She is the first woman named in the genealogy. Any reader who knew Genesis would now be thinking of her whole story.
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.