Mr Khan said:
The point of the story of Onan was that Onan was messing with family structures. He had to have sex with the wife he inherited from his brother, but if he pulled out at the last moment every time so that he would not conceive a child with her, because he had inherited the wife from his older brother (levirate marriage) and any children that she bore by him would count as his older brother's heirs, and would thus be assigned a larger portion of the inheritence than if the wife died childless. So the message of the story wasn't about "not wasting your seed" or any such thing, but about respect for the dead, and not denying your brother the heir he was supposed to get (fun fact: the wife eventually poses as a prostitute, seduces the father, and gets the heir that way, so a certain degree of sexual immorality was encouraged in that story). Similarly, I did research into the matter of the Levitical prohibitions against homosexuality in my bible law class in college, and found out that they also had to deal with family matters and trying to keep the Jews culturally distinct from other groups than any particular morals. It also prohibits "giving your seed to Molech," and Yahweh alone knows what that's supposed to mean :P |
Wow, thanks for explaining the Onan story. Since Genesis only says that "he knew that the offspring would not be his" I never realized it meant the portion of Judah's inheritance would not be his but increase in favor of his brother (who's dead though... and the money goes straight to his Onan's kids, unless Er had prior offspring, but that wouldn't change anything EDIT: I'm confused about it again. :3). I knew that Tamar dressed as a prostitute and married her father-in-law (Judah), that much I knew.
It definitely shows that God is against greed since the guy gets pretty much "put to death" by God. :)
Remember though, this was all before the law of Moses, since Judah is a son of Jacob, much earlier than Moses.
I'm not sure where Judah got "Lie with your brother’s wife and fulfill your duty to her as a brother-in-law to produce offspring for your brother.", but I can only guess it was a custom they brought back from Ur, or it was a canaanite custom. Who knows :D
But in the end, it doesn't paint a pretty picture that not only did he not "fulfill his duty" to his brother, but he also basically failed to honor God's commandment to be fruitful and multiply as given in Genesis.
Imho there is also a matter of sexual immorality in this matter, whether it be to control the flow of Semen or to have sex without the objective bearing offspring. Whether he did it for greed or not, ultimately God was upset at what he did, and that was have sex and exit before it leaked into her womb. It's my understanding of it.
But this is a supporting argument. The stronger argument against rape was the mention of the structure of marriage as outlined by God in Genesis, and then Ephesians 5. ;)
