Judah then said to his daughter-in-law Tamar: live as a widow in your father's household until my son Shelah grows up. For he thought, he may die too, just as his brothers did. So Tamar went to live in her father's household. The instruction to wait for Shelah — with the unspoken intention of never actually giving him — is Judah's self-protective injustice toward Tamar. He thinks Tamar is the cause of his sons' deaths; he is protecting Shelah. But the effect is to deprive Tamar of her legal right. The application: the injustice that is motivated by fear for one's own children at the expense of someone else's legal rights is still injustice.

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