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(2.) The daughter-in-law of Judah, to whose eldest son, Er, she was married (Genesis 38:6). After her husband’s death, she was married to Onan, his brother (8), and on his death, Judah promised to her that his third son, Shelah, would become her husband. This promise was not fulfilled, and hence Tamar’s revenge and Judah’s great guilt (38:12-30).
(3.) A daughter of David (2 Samuel 13:1-32; 1 Chronicles 3:9), whom Amnon shamefully outraged and afterwards “hated exceedingly,” thereby illustrating the law of human nature noticed even by the heathen, “Proprium humani ingenii est odisse quem laeseris”, i.e., “It is the property of human nature to hate one whom you have injured.”
(4.) A daughter of Absalom (2 Samuel 14:27).
•TAMARISK Hebrews ‘eshel (Genesis 21:33; 1 Samuel 22:6; 31:13, in the R.V.; but in A.V., “grove,” “tree”); Arab. asal. Seven species of this tree are found in Palestine. It is a “very graceful tree, with long feathery branches and tufts closely clad with the minutest of leaves, and surmounted in spring with spikes of beautiful pink blosoms, which seem to envelop the whole tree in one gauzy sheet of colour” (Tristram’s Nat. Hist.).
•TAMMUZ a corruption of Dumuzi, the Accadian sun-God (the Adonis of the Greeks), the husband of the goddess Ishtar. In the Chaldean calendar there was a month set apart in honour of this God, the month of June to July, the beginning of the summer solstice. At this festival, which lasted six days, the worshippers, with loud lamentations, bewailed the funeral of the God, they sat “weeping for Tammuz” (Ezekiel 8:14).
The name, also borrowed from Chaldea, of one of the months of the Hebrew calendar.