What Do You Make of This Bible Verse?

But Onan knew that the offspring would not be his. So whenever he went in to his brother's wife he would waste the semen on the ground, so as not to give offspring to his brother. And what he did was wicked in the sight of the Lord, and he put him to death also. -- Genesis 38 : 9-10

Is it proof that God hates male masturbation, or only hates men who refuse to fuck their brother's wife?

I was having a debate with a fundie Christian the other day who said it is the former, but he also said that liberal Christians think its the latter to justify their "sinful self-abuse."

My question for both kinds of Christians would be: how is it okay that God is seemingly willing to put someone to death in EITHER instance?

Why don't you beat your meat and find out???

:rofl: atcually, I've been trying hard to get God to kill me this way cuz I'm suicidal and to chickenshit to blow my head off or jump... it ain't workin

The context of the story is that Onan was supposed to be fucking his brother's wife because his brother was shooting blanks, and this was the only way they could have a kid. Onan didn't want to be both daddy and uncle, so he pulled out. Which meant he was still fucking his brother's wife, but only for fun, not for the purpose of procreation.

Which made it adultery, and that's on God's Top 10 list. So God smote his ass.

Onan was being tacky, indeed.

It was the law/custom to marry your dead brother's wife in order to produce heirs for the dead brother. That's what displeased YAHWEH, refusal to give an offspring.

"in to his brother's wife?"

Why does our sexual morality come from a time of shortages of population? That shortage is long gone. If God can evolve from the vengeful killer of the old testament to the lovey dovey God of today, why can't we?

What really pisses off many Christians is when you bring up the fact that Jesus had absolutely nothing at all to say about homosexuality. The only thing that can really be at all construed as a reference against homosexuality is a single line found in the Old Testament. Also in the Old Testament you'll find that God either advocated or was completely indifferent to things like murder, rape, pedophilia, slavery, wars of aggression, prostitution, bigamy, and incest. So by this logic, homosexuality is a mortal sin, but it's OK for the US to invade Canada, kill all the men, and turn all the women into sex slaves. That is, if you believe the sole compass to morality can be found in a book written by nomadic desert camel drivers 3,000 years ago.

There's a notion that the coming of Jesus begat a "new deal" with God that explains why it's okay to eat pork and break other old testament rules. Homosexuality didn't get the same review, however.

regarding what does and doesn't make the cut.

I kinda get that the old men with the pointy hats go to decide that the trinity was the way to go even though there was no direct reference to it in the Bible, but who gets to decide these things for the Protestants? I mean if you're a Baptist you can't dance, but a Presbyterian can. It almost seems like you can just figure out all the shit you wanna get away with and pick the denomination that tolerates the most of it. Or better yet, let's say your thing is fucking donkeys. Couldn't you just start up your own denomination and call it the 8th Day Donkey Fuckers, and then issue an edict that says donkey fucking is not only acceptable, but expected?

I've got a donkey here all ready to go, but so far no 8th day has come up yet. It's a terrible sin to fuck a donkey any other day, but I don't know how much longer I can stand waiting. The way she snorts, the way she flicks those adorable ears, the firm, round shape of her... Oh, God! Why do you make me suffer such unfulfilled longing!?

It's a sin to fuck a donkey on the 8th day sabbath and on February 30th as that is the start of Lint. Any other day is fine. So it is written, so it shall be.

if it's an atheist donkey. But you have to kill it afterwards.

...then you and the sheep are to be hanged.

The bugger gets killed but the sheep gets fucked and killed. So it sucks to be a sheep in Ireland.

Answer: Because someone might think they're dancing:)

but the continuation of that family tree. Hence, if the husband is dead, a brother could still contribute to the continuation of the family.

I liked it!

i give it an 8.

Based just on this passage, without any broader context, I'd say that it is saying nothing about masturbation and nothing about the dude not fucking his brother's wife. Sounds like there is fucking taking place, it's just that the dude is pulling out before the real action takes place. Big difference.

It establishes the obligation to marry a brother's childless widow, for the purposes of propagating the family line.

"If brothers are living together and one of them dies without a son, his widow must not marry outside the family. Her husband's brother shall take her and marry her and fulfill the duty of a brother-in-law to her. The first son she bears shall carry on the name of the dead brother so that his name will not be blotted out from Israel"

Onan's not taking one for the team -- for the family and for Israel. That's why he's punished. Usually you just get have your SIL spit on you and hit you with a sandal, and they change your name...

The punishment to me is a bit severe, but baruch ata Adonai, dayan ha-emet.

Or is this something along the lines of "dispensations" where certain parts of the Bible are supposed to be read first or something?

...was writing in a society ca. 550 BCE that had long lived by the rules that make up the books of Exodus, Deuteronomy, Leviticus and Numbers. He's applying his day's rules and norms backwards in time. Strictly speaking they don't apply -- the chronology's off, and Onan is bound only by Noahic law, and Abramhic law, but it's hard to consistently imagine a world different from your own. Storytelling is a different craft from codifying oral law into written form, too.

Homer does something very similar, applying Early Archaic norms backwards onto Mycenaean characters. The Homeric world is a congeries of customs, artifacts, of both times, and of no time. All this stuff existed in an oral tradition for centuries before any of it got written down, and a strictly linear chronology is a later idea.

It's not as though as it were introduced in 1000 BC or afterwards. It existed by 2000 BC, in all likelihood. It wasn't formalized in Hebrew, but it was there, in the cultures of the region.

Was levirate marriage common and held to be of such importance as to merit death when the Pentateuch is said to have been redacted, post-Captivity?

It's a question of whether the Mosaic law was new and imposed, or adopted and regulated much of what had been going on.

The first recorded case of coitus interruptus, I think. Seed gets spilled on the ground - early birth control.

I think Onan was doomed because of the wife-banging, not because of the spilled seed.

Check the language carefully - "... whenever he want in to his brother's wife..."

Not, "every time he visited his brother's wife," and not "every time he stayed with his brother's wife," and not "every time he was in the company of his brother's wife," but "every time he went in to his brother's wife."

Critical and careful reading of things can adjust all sort of perspectives.

It's about adultery, not whacking off.

God loves masturbation. It's what he traded to priests and nuns in exchange for those vows of celibacy, and, besides, it wouldn't be so easy if God didn't want it that way.

Now, go watch your fundie pal's head explode................

I guess I've just heard too many Catholics warn about "spilling your seed" that I just took it at face value.

but you owe us all a report of the anticipated explosion.

Good luck!!

It was the pulling out and not giving his SIL a child. You might say it was the "wife banging" without the payment.

having been raised Roman Catholic (the Bible's not a big deal) - so was his brother dead? Because, yeah, if he was dead, then Onan had a duty to get the job done...................

The issue was that he (Onan) did not fulfill his duty to be the kinsman redeemer for his deceased brother. God had killed Er, his brother because he had done wicked things and then when Er's brother Onan refused to carry out the duties of kinsman redeemer (to keep his brother's line alive) God killed him too.

As for your question... I look at it like this, He's God. Who am I to judge what God does? Job 40:2 says "Will the one who contends with the Almighty correct him? Let him who accuses God answer him!" as for me, I'm not feeling that empowered.

God: I killed your brother, now bang his wife and conceive him a child.
Odan: ok. (then pulls out)
God: You shall die as well.

So the line isn't continued. God should have known he wasn't gonna do it anyway. Killing idiots makes God great. Where is he today?

from the former OR the latter, so it must have a symbolic meaning, which is what a lot of the bible uses. Problem is, people like to take it literally, which is what creates nutbags!

then he really wouldn't have needed his sister-in-law in the story.

names their kid Onan?

http://www.logos.com/products/details/1690

When Ger was grown up, according to ancient custom (cf. Gen_21:21; Gen_34:4) his father gave him a wife, named Thamar, probably a Canaanite, of unknown parentage. But Ger was soon put to death by Jehovah on account of his wickedness. Judah then wished Onan, as the brother-in-law, to marry the childless widow of his deceased brother, and raise up seed, i.e., a family, for him. But as he knew that the first-born son would not be the founder of his own family, but would perpetuate the family of the deceased and receive his inheritance, he prevented conception when consummating the marriage by spilling the semen. אַרְצָה שִׁחֵת, “destroyed to the ground (i.e., let it fall upon the ground), so as not to give seed to his brother” (נְתֹן for תֵּת only here and Num_20:21). This act not only betrayed a want of affection to his brother, combined with a despicable covetousness for his possession and inheritance, but was also a sin against the divine institution of marriage and its object, and was therefore punished by Jehovah with sudden death. The custom of levirate marriage, which is first mentioned here, and is found in different forms among Indians, Persians, and other nations of Asia and Africa, was not founded upon a divine command, but upon an ancient tradition, originating probably in Chaldea. It was not abolished, however, by the Mosaic law (Deu_25:5.), but only so far restricted as not to allow it to interfere with the sanctity of marriage; and with this limitation it was enjoined as a duty of affection to build up the brother's house, and to preserve his family and name (see my Bibl. Archäologie, §108).

B: Wife swapping? that book is full of crap and contradictions...

There is no masturbation involved therein. Onan is banging his brother wife, because Onan's brother banged his wife and knocked her up. It seems that Onan, being bitter about the whole thing, decided to pull out rather than bare a child for his brother with Onan's brother's wife...So gawd, being the jealous control freak, did not like it that Onan pulled out, so the invisible man in the sky killed Onan.

Its bronze age desert dogma rubbish..

who are the source and inspiration of all moral and ethical behavior, you permit insanity to flourish.

it probably was the "non-procreative" sex thing that did Onan in. Sex is for making babies, not whoopee. :smoke:

The odd part is that the Bible gives two totally different instructions about what to do with the widow of a dead brother.

The relevent one (regarding poor Onan) is from Deuteronomy 25, verses 5-7:

"When brothers live together and one of them dies without a son, the widow of the deceased shall not marry anyone outside the family; but her husband's brother shall go to her and perform the duty of the brother-in-law by marrying her. The first-born son she bears shall continue the line of the deceased brother, that his name may not be blotted out from Israel." The is known as "Levirate Marriage" and this, apparently, is what was expected of Onan. (And yes, if the brother refuses to marry his sister-in-law, she can complain to the elders and if he still refuses, she can take off his sandal and spit in his face, and his lineage will be forever known as "the family of the man stripped of his sandal.")

Apparently the whole shoe thing still exists--anyone remember the famous shoe-throwing incident in Iraq involving former President Bush? :9

HOWEVER, as I already mentioned, there is an earlier text which seems directly to contradict Deuteronomy. Here it is:

Leviticus 20:21: "If a man marries his brother's wife and thus disgraces his brother, they shall be childless because of this incest."

This verse from Leviticus, BTW, is the one that King Henry VIII famously used in his argument re: why he should be allowed to divorce his first wife, Katherine of Aragon (and, just by the way, then have the way cleared to marry Anne Boleyn). Katherine had in fact been his sister-in-law; she had previously been married to Henry's older brother, Prince Arthur, but Arthur died only months after the wedding. Several years later, after his own father Henry VII died, leaving Henry Jr the heir, Henry decided to marry Katherine after taking the precaution of receiving a dispensation from the Pope (everyone was Catholic then). Henry argued that this non-Levitical marriage was barren because he and Katherine had broken the law of Leviticus 20:21. (Altho the verse specifically says "childless", which didn't quite fit since Henry and Katherine did have a surviving daughter, Mary. I guess in Henry's view, daughters didn't count.)

Of course some of those who opposed Henry's divorce from Katherine did quote Deuteronomy, but Henry managed to drown them out since that argument did nothing to help his cause.

This wrangling went on for years, and Henry only "won" by breaking with the Catholic Church.

What amazes ME is that apparently no one saw the glaring discrepancies here between Deuteronomy and Leviticus on the very same subject!! :o

"So whenever he went in to his brother's wife he would waste the semen on the ground" Sound like he was having actual sex with his brothers wife and then pulled out to ejaculate, the most primitive form of birth control. How is this seen as masturbation?

"Is it proof that God hates male masturbation, or only hates men who refuse to fuck their brother's wife?" Again, I dont see any masturbation here (other than the verbal kind) and he did have sex with his brothers wife. Maybe THAT is what he is so upset about.

In a characteristic display of dishonesty, many Christian authorities have claimed that that phrase also refers to masturbation. The idea is that any time someone ejaculates, he must do so into the vagina of a woman to whom he is married, in an attempt to produce a legitimate offspring. If anything other than this is the case, we are told, God gets quite irate.

This line of thinking abuses a very narrow mandate- to produce an heir for a deceased brother- and expands it into a universal order to use every available gamete to create another human life, on penalty of your own being taken from you.

This has to do with an old Hebrew custom (called yibbum) where the brother of a man who died without children had an obligation to marry the widow. But both parties were exempt from marriage if neither wanted to get married.

With this said, I don't understand the bit about liberal Christian giving the interpretation that the killing in the passage was to justify "sinful self-abuse" since scholarship would show that yibbum is even included in Jewish Law (although it is discouraged).

My assumption is that a liberal Christian would put 2 and 2 together but I would have to ask one to know what he/she thinks.

... you to shoot it on her tits.

and the interpretations that God hate masturbation or that God hates birth control are retroactive interpretations.

It's probably an elaboration of an actual incident in which some guy was having sex with his brother's widow, pulled out, and had a heart attack during orgasm.

This quote is taken from a context where neither masturbation nor fornication are the issue. The issue is the abuse of a woman. So if you could all forgo the undue focus on the male part of the human species for a moment, I will explain.

In the times of Genesis, having no children could not as yet be helped through in-vitro-fertilisation. Sperms donors where supposed to make the donation into the woman's womb. It was not uncustomary for brothers to help each other conceive offspring, if either brother failed to do so for whatever reason. The woman concerned did not always give her consent, although in the case of this bible verse the consent is supposed to have been present.

Of course, the whole arrangement would cease as soon as any offspring had been conceived - that is, at the moment the woman becomes pregnant. By consciously witholding pregnancy from his brother's wife, Onan unnecessarily prolongs the time he can have sex with his sister-in-law. That is an abuse of the situation. He uses his brother's misery to further his sexual appetite, and objectifies his sister-in-law as he goes along.

Such a betrayal of family usually doen't go unpunished in the Bible, and neither does the abuse of women. Death, aspecially in the earlier books of the bible, seems to have been a common punishment for betrayal and sexual abuse.

In short, this is not about penises, this is about a womb.

The firstborn son got a double share of the inheritance. If he was dead, it would go to his offspring--if he only had one son, it would go to him.

When Onan's brother died, Onan was the remaining heir to the land and flocks his brother would inherit. His brother's share would default to him and to his children; at a minimu, he'd be the new eldest son. Were he to sire a child on his dead brother's wife, he and his children would not get their bonus inheritance.

It also created a problem for her. As a widow, she had few rights; without children, she'd have children to care for her. This means she'd be a burden, and treated like one.

Yes, he would continue to get access to his brother's widow. However, that's less obviously a reason for onanism than simple greed. True, lust counts for a lot, but in the absence of a household of her own she'd be merged into his. She'd be around anyway; and if he's not being especially righteous, he'd either kick her out or take her to bed.

The law, from Deuteronomy chapter 25 and quoted by another poster above, says that a man must marry his brother's widow. The story of Onan and Tamar was written with this anachronistic law imposed on the situation. Onan would get to have sex with his former sister-in-law and current wife Tamar for as long as he wanted. Notice that at Genesis 38:26, Judah admits that it was his duty to marry Tamar to Shelah, Onan's younger brother, after Onan had died and Shelah had come of age. This law also applied to Onan after the death of his brother Er. Tamar was rightly his wife, so there was no limit to the amount of sex he could have with her.

Genesis also explicitly says that the reason Onan pulled out and spilled his semen on the ground is because he did not want to have a child that would legally be his brother's. It doesn't mention any kind of motive related to having more sex.

Onan is not exploiting his brother's misery, either. His brother Er, Tamar's first husband, is dead, which Genesis also states explicitly at 38:7. It is not the case that Er was impotent and asked his brother to conceive for him. Onan had a duty to continue his brother's line, and a duty to the nation of Israel to produce offspring. There is no more focus of the responsibility Onan and Judah have to Tamar than to the need to produce an heir for the late brother Er. We see throughout Genesis 38 that Tamar remains a member of Judah's house and essentially his legal subject.

Your feminist interpretation is unwarranted by the text. Sometimes stories really are misogynistic, and this one was very likely written by a man in a male-dominated culture. It was not written to empower women in its society or any other society. By trying to redeem what is a misogynist text, you are actually preserving the patriarchy inherent in the scriptures of the Abrahamic religions.

I'll be in my bunk.

Why waste it on the ground? It's a lot hotter for voyeur God if he shot his load somewhere more....interesting.

:evilgrin:

he was required to give his (dead) brother's wife children by Levitical law. He refused to do so, which was the offense.