Enaim

Enaim ("two springs" or "two eyes") was a small road station on the way from Adullam to Timnah where Judah's widowed daughter-in-law Tamar staged a desperate gambit to secure her place in his family line (Genesis 38:14, 21). After Judah had repeatedly denied her the levirate marriage owed her, Tamar removed her widow's clothes, covered her face with a veil, and sat at the "entrance of Enaim" by the road. Judah mistook her for a shrine prostitute, gave her his signet, cord, and staff as a pledge, and slept with her. Three months later, when she was found to be pregnant and Judah ordered her burned alive for harlotry, she produced his pledge tokens and he confessed: "She is more righteous than I." The twins she bore, Perez and Zerah, became founders of the leading clan of Judah — and Perez is named in the genealogy of David and Jesus (Ruth 4:18-22, Matthew 1:3). The site is uncertain; it lay in the Judean Shephelah on the road between Adullam and Timnah.