This is actually an example that is unusually clear, although it does not look like it now. The same Hebrew word lies under the English word, harlot, in all three verses. It is Strong's 6948, and in Hebrew it is pronounced, kedeshah. It is the feminine of 6945, qadosh, which means a male holy person. Kedeshah is the feminine of qadosh, and thus kedeshah, means a female holy person.
That is the word in all three of theses verses. Kedeshah, which is translated harlot, and yet the word directly means, a female holy person, and Judah thought for sure he was looking at a harlot. Why? Because the broader context of this chapter demands it. Judah thought this woman—who turned out to be his daughter-in-law, Tamar, that he had not seen for a number of years—was a harlot because she was disguised by her attire as a temple prostitute, and that is why the King James Version, and the New King James Version, both translated that word in Genesis 38:15; 21-22, as harlot.
By definition of that term, she was considered holy—by the definition of the word, by the appearance, place of her occupation—as a prostitute—and the clothing that she was wearing. We know today if we see a girl going along the streets dressed like a harlot or maybe she is a harlot, we might say. That is kind of the way it was with Tamar. Here she was right outside the Temple and she was dressed like a harlot, and Judah just assumed she was a harlot.
Tamar's disguise was actually part of an elaborate ruse to get Judah's attention so that he would follow through on a promise that he made to her years earlier. This example shows that we must be careful not to assume that the term holy might always indicate something spiritually good, because it does not.
Now you come to her motives for what she was doing here. She saw that Judah was tricking her, or keeping her from what was rightfully hers. Whether she was thinking that she would be barren (because, remember, she was probably by this time in her early twenties and beginning to feel like she was an old maid) and that Judah had a responsibility to her and he was not fulfilling it. Like Sarah and Rachel, and others, she was going to somehow take matters into her own hands and work this out. So she decides to pose as a harlot.
Evidently, this "young goat from the flock" was considered a delicacy. So it was a fairly high price.
That is, "something as an earnest, so that I'll know that you will actually give it to me."
You see, her widow's garments would have identified her to the outside world as a widow. But she took them off from her, ...
Judah thought she was a harlot because of the way she was dressed. That is why it specifically said she took off her normal clothing. Now what was in her heart? She wanted a husband that was promised to her, and the way she decided to get it was to seduce Judah, and so she seduced him using clothing. That must have been, for the times anyway, pretty revealing, because he fell right into the trap.
This is an indication that harlots in those days dressed in a way that they would be recognizable, almost as if they had on kind of a uniform, and Tamar, whether for good or bad, had dressed herself in a way that caused Judah to think that she was a harlot.
