Genesis 38:25

...She was being brought out: to be burned.

Tamar was brought forth to be burned, and she searched for the three pledges, but found them not. Uplifiting her eyes to the heavens above, she thus said, Mercy I implore from Thee, O Lord: answer Thou me in this hour of need, and enlighten mine eyes to find the three witnesses; and I will dedicate unto Thee from my loins three saints who shall sanctify Thy name, and descend to the furnace of fire in the plain of Dura. In that hour the Holy One, blessed be He, signed to Michael, who enlightened her eyes, that she found (the witnesses) and took and cast them before the, feet of the judges, and said, The man to whom these pledges belong is he by whom I am with child. Yet though I may be burned I do not make him manifest: nevertheless the Lord of the world will cause him in his heart to acknowledged them, and will deliver me from this great judgment. Now when Jehuda saw them, he recognised them, and said in his heart, It is better for me to be ashamed in this world that passeth away, than be ashamed in the faces of my righteous fathers in the world to come. It is better that I burn in this world by a fire that is extinguished, than burn in the world to come with fire devouring fire. For measure is set against measure. This is according to that which I said to Jakob my father, Know now the robe of thy son; so am I now constrained to hear at the place of judgment, Whose are this seal and mantle and staff ?

היא מוצאת, after she had taken out the pledges given to her by Yehudah and sent them to him via a messenger, she did not want to directly confront him, but said: ”I am pregnant for the man who owned these.”

היא מוצאת והיא שלחה, even at this late stage in the trial when she was already on the way to the site of her execution, Tamar did not despair, as she had a heart as stout as that of a lion.

לאיש אשר אלה לו, even though she was in extreme danger she did not want to publicly embarrass Yehudah. She is the person who inspired our sages to declare that one ought to prefer to be burned in public to publicly embarrassing a fellow human being (Sotah 10

היא מוצאת, she did not make the matter public even when she was on the point of being executed. Therefore she only hinted at the owner of the trinkets she wanted Yehudah to recognise without accusing him outright as having given them to her after he had slept with her. לאיש אשר אלה לו, this prompted our ages in Sotah 10 to say that it is better for a person to throw himself into a burning furnace than to cause public embarrassment to a fellow human being. Tamar demonstrated this by the conduct the Torah attributes to her in our verse. The word לו, a reference to an unnamed third party left Yehudah the option to ignore her accusation, and for any future embarrassment on that score to be wiped out with her death.

ותאמר, this she said to the messenger she sent to Yehudah with the pledges that he had given her. הכר נא, Bereshit Rabbah 85,11 notes how the Torah “plays” with people. She hinted to Yehudah that he had used the same words to deceive his father into believing that Joseph had been devoured by a wild animal. Now it was his turn to be deceived. The punishment matches the crime. (37,32) The Torah, knowing what was to happen in the future, smiled to itself thinking: “wait until you will be deceived by these same words.”