Onan

[OllieFranz]

This first post is not directly about homosexuality, but I do intend to tie that issue in. I just want to hear first, from some of the other posters here, their understanding of a semi-related issue.

[BIBLE]Genesis 38:8-10[/BIBLE]

What, exactly, was Onan's sin?

 

[BigBadWlf]

This first post is not directly about homosexuality, but I do intend to tie that issue in. I just want to hear first, from some of the other posters here, their understanding of a semi-related issue.

[bible]Genesis 38:8-10[/bible]

What, exactly, was Onan's sin?

The sin was the failure to complete the rape of his former sister-in-law.

The passages in one of several in the bible referring to a levirate marriage

The name of this type of marriage is derived from the Latin word "levir," which means "brother-in-law." This marriage involved a woman who was widowed without having borne a son her brother in law and any wives that brother in-law may already have. The widowed woman would be required to leave her home, marry her brother-in-law, live with him, become a subservient wife to any women he was already married to and engage in sexual relations with her former brother in law. Their first-born son was considered to be sired by the deceased husband . More simply put the woman would have to endure what was essentially serial rapes with her former brother-in-law as perpetrator.

In Genesis 38:6-10, Tamar's husband Er was killed by God for unspecified sinful behavior. Er's brother, Onan, was then required by custom to marry Tamar. Not wanting to have a child who would not be consider his, he engaged in a simple and unreliable form of birth control: coitis interruptus.

God obviously gives a very high priority to the levirate marriage obligation and being very displeased with Onan's cunning plan to enjoy the rape of his sister-in-law while not actually impregnating her. God ends up killing Onan. There is no mention as to what happened to Onan and the other wife/wives of Onan. We can assume they were passed along to another brother or other male relative to be raped.

 

[OllieFranz]

Actually he went far enough along o have technically raped Tamar, if it was indeed non-consentual. After all, she was upset that Judah did not require the next son to marry her. (Of course that might have been cultural brainwashing).

But what I was wondering about was whether any of the regular posters on "the other side of the fence" would try to claim that the fact that God was upset that Onan spilled his seed on the ground indicated that he does not like the waste of sperm. After all, that is the rationale for using this passage to preach against masturbation, and the source of the mis-named sin "Onanism." Some of those posters have been making similar wasted seed arguments about the other mis-named sin of "Sodomy."

But it was not the seed wasted on the ground that angered God, but the insult implied in the disregard of the levirate marriage laws.

That the waste of sperm does not matter is shown by the fact that the results of a wet dream do not pollute the man any more than if he accidently touched something that came into contact with a corpse. a menstruating woman or a person with a running sore (See Leviticus 15:16 and Deuteronomy 23:10), nor is there a moral penalty invoked.