11. Then Judah said to Tamar, his daughter-in-law, “Stay a widow in your father’s house until Shelah my son grows up,” for he feared he would also die like his brother. So Tamar went and stayed in the house of her father.
12. And in the course of time the daughter of Shua, the wife of Judah, died. When Judah was consoled he went up to his sheepshearers, he and his friend Hirah the Adullamite, to Timnah.
13. And it was told to Tamar, saying, “Look, your father-in-law is going up to Timnah to shear his sheep.”
14. So she removed the clothes of her widowhood and covered herself with the veil and disguised herself. And she sat at the entrance to Eynayim, which is on the way to Timnah, for she saw that Shelah was grown but she had not been given to him as a wife.
15. And Judah saw her and reckoned her to be a prostitute, for she had covered her face.
16. And he turned aside to her at the roadside and said, “Please come, let me come in to you,” for he did not know that she was his daughter-in-law. And she said, “What will you give to me that you may come in to me?”
17. And he said, “I will send a kid from the goats of the flock.” And she said, “Only if you give a pledge until you send it.”
18. And he said, “What is the pledge that I must give to you?” And she said, “your seal, your cord, and your staff that is in your hand.” And he gave them to her and went in to her. And she conceived by him.
19. And she arose and left, and she removed her veil from herself and put on the garments of her widowhood.
20. And Judah sent the kid from the goats by the hand of his friend the Adullamite to take back the pledge from the hand of the woman, but he could not find her.
21. So he asked the men of her place, saying, “Where is that cult prostitute that was at Eynayim by the roadside?” And they said, “There is no cult prostitute here.”
22. Then he returned to Judah and said, “I could not find her. Morever, the men of the place said, ‘There is no cult prostitute here.’ ”
23. And Judah said, “Let her take them for herself, lest we be laughed at. Behold, I sent this kid, but you could not find her.”