THAMAR (Heb. Tāmār “palm”). — The name of three women and of one locality in the Old Testament.
1. Wife of Her, Giuda (v.), son of Giacobbe (Gen. 38:6). When her husband died, she passed by Onan (v.); when he too died because of his sin, compelled by her superstitious father-in-law, who feared for the lives of his other sons, to remain secluded, she by a stratagem induced her father-in-law Giuda himself to unite with her, and by him had the two sons Phares and Zara. The woman’s right had prevailed (cf. Ruth 4:12) to provide legal offspring for her first husband; in Phares the direct line of the Judaic-Davidic genealogy was preserved (Mt. 1:3).
2. Daughter of David by his wife Maacha (because she was the sister of Absalom; cf. II Sam. 13:1 with 3:3), of great beauty, who against her will played a part in a dark tragedy of the royal family: violated by her brother Amnon (whose mother was Achinoam: ibid. 3:2) (ibid. 13:1 ff.), she took refuge with Absalom, who two years later avenged her by killing his half-brother Amnon at a banquet (ibid. 13:28–29).
3. Daughter of Absalom, likewise celebrated for her beauty (ibid. 2:27).
4. A locality mentioned in Ez. 47:19 (and also to be restored in V. 18) and 48:28 in the ideal description of the eastern boundaries of Palestine (also in the Hebrew of I Reg. 9:18, kethibh), identified with a region near Cades, in the present-day 'Arabah, probably with Assonthanar of Gen. 14:7, near the southern tip of the Dead Sea. Giovanni Rinaldi