"... Genesis 38 recounts how Judah ended up sleeping with his daughter-in-law, Tamar. When Jubilees retells this story, it provides both Judah and Tamar with a legal exculpation that the biblical story did not mention. It asserts that Tamar’s earlier marriages to Er and Onan had never been consummated (see Jubilees 41:2-5, 27-28). As a result, she was still a virgin when the incident with Judah occurred—and thus legally available to be married to him. Their union was therefore altogether licit and neither of them was liable for punishment (as indeed they were not punished in the biblical narrative). Yet in the middle of the Jubilees narrative comes a passage summarizing the legal lesson to be learned from it (41:23-26). This passage—characterized by the typical “terminology of the Heavenly Tablets”—mentions nothing about Tamar still being a virgin nor, consequently, anything about the innocence of the two participants. Instead, as far as the author of this passage was concerned, Judah was fully deserving of punishment and only “had forgiveness because he turned away from his sin” (41:25) after pleading and lamenting (41:24) before God. (It says nothing about the guilt or innocence of Tamar.) But if, according to the surrounding narrative, Judah did nothing wrong, why should he have had to plead and lament? ..."