What Shouldn’t Have to Be Said

Let’s start with the obvious: you shouldn’t be inside your sister-in-law unless you’re a surgeon operating on her ailing body. And even then, most hospital guidelines frown against doctors treating their own family members.

Since we’ve already written at length about the Bible’s guidelines for who we should/shouldn’t be sleeping with, we’re not going to spend a lot of time here rehashing that. However, as a general rule, let’s just say don’t have sex with your sister-in-law.

In the two-for-one Card Talk that addressed the similarities between the stories of Ruth [“Ruth’s sexy time with a drunken relative” (Ruth 3:4-10a)] and Tamar [“Not being a whore, but wearing one's uniform.” (Genesis 38:12-23)], the character Onan was mentioned: he is the eponymous sister-in-law-puller-outer and the focus of this Card Talk.

To start, we find it interesting/odd that while Onan is not discussed in many prominent biblical dictionaries and resources, he is the namesake of an entry in Merriam-Webster’s dictionary:

Onanism: 1. Masturbation; 2. Coitus Interruptus; 3 : Self-Gratification

[Yeah: it’s going to be that kind of a Card Talk. Strap in.]

Sanctified Sister Sex?

Genesis chapter 38 records the story of how a man named Judah—one of Jacob’s many sons, and for whom the tribe of Judah is named—left home and settled in a foreign land. There he married the unnamed daughter of a Canaanite named Shua. This unnamed woman bore Judah three (3) sons: Er, Onan, and Shelah. When he came of age, Judah arranged for Er to marry a woman named Tamar. However, Er pissed off God in some way the Bible doesn’t explain, and God killed him (vs 7). Our card comes from what happens next:

Then Judah said to Onan,“Go in to your brother’s wife and perform the duty of a brother-in-law to her {yabam יָבַם} ; raise up offspring for your brother.”But since Onan knew that the offspring would not be his, he spilled his semen on the ground whenever he went in to his brother’s wife, so that he would not give offspring to his brother. (Gen 38:8-9, NRSV)

As discussed in the aforementioned Card Talk, Hebrew law and custom dictated that when a woman was widowed, she was to be “redeemed” by a kinsman of her dead husband—a go’el. Some male relative was supposed to marry her because, well, patriarchy. If available, this was supposed to be the brother of the dead man. This practice of the brother stepping in to marry his sister-in-law is widely attested to in Ancient Near East cultures. In Judaism it is referred to as yibbum, or a “Levirate Marriage.” Biblically this is spelled out in Deuteronomy 25:5-10:

When brothers reside together, and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the deceased shall not be married outside the family to a stranger. Her husband’s brother {yabam יָבַם} shall go in to her, taking her in marriage, and {yabam יָבַם} performing the duty of a husband’s brother to her, and the firstborn whom she bears shall succeed to the name of the deceased brother, so that his name may not be blotted out of Israel.

But if the man has no desire to marry his brother’s widow, then his brother’s widow shall go up to the elders at the gate and say, “My husband’s brother refuses to perpetuate his brother’s name in Israel; he will not perform the duty of a husband’s brother to me.” Then the elders of his town shall summon him and speak to him. If he persists, saying, “I have no desire to marry her,” then his brother’s wife shall go up to him in the presence of the elders, pull his sandal off his foot, spit in his face, and declare, “This is what is done to the man who does not build up his brother’s house.” Throughout Israel his family shall be known as “the house of him whose sandal was pulled off.”

In our story, Onan was supposed to be the go-el, “redeemer” for his brother Er. But Onan did not want his child being an heir for his dead brother, with all land, wealth, and notoriety gained passing to someone else. But he also did not want to deal with the public shaming that would come from not accepting Tamar, so he married her.

But every time they had sex, he would pull-out and ejaculate on the ground.

The text tells us this was not a one-time occurrence: “…he spilled his semen on the ground whenever he went in to his brother’s wife…” (vs 9). Onan had no problem having sex with Tamar, using her body for his pleasure, but he wanted to make sure that he would not provide his brother an heir. God was none to happy about this arrangement:

What he did was displeasing in the sight of the Lord, and he put him to death also.

(Gen 38:10).

Coming to an Understanding

One of the most interesting things about the story of Onan, beyond what has been discussed above, is how the story has impacted the Christian Church’s conversations about human sexuality.

While we could write a whole book about sexual gratification and the Bible— wherein we would definitely dip into our discussions about interpreting Song of Solomon—Onan has been used to decry the evils of masturbation, wet dreams, spermicides, condoms, IUDs, cervical caps, diaphragms, sponges, and yes, even pulling out.

Why? Because it’s “wasting seed.” Because if you recognize that all semen is potential life, then no semen should be wasted.

How? Because “the excretion of semen is for making babies and nothing else!”

And some people were/are VERY SERIOUS about this idea. Here are some examples from over the centuries:

• In The Instructor of Children, Clement of Alexandria (A.D. 191) wrote, “Because of its divine institution for the propagation of man, the seed is not to be vainly ejaculated, nor is it to be damaged, nor is it to be wasted,” and “to have coitus other than to procreate children is to do injury to nature.”
  

• In The Panarion Against Heresies, Epiphanius (A.D. 375) wrote of Egyptian heretics who “exercise genital acts, yet prevent the conceiving of children. Not in order to produce offspring, but to satisfy lust, are they eager for corruption.”
  

• John Wesley (1765) wrote that those like Onan, who spill their seed for any reason other than procreation, are sinners. And “… those sins that dishonor the body are very displeasing to God, and the evidence of vile actions. Observe, the thing which he did displeased the Lord— And it is to be feared, thousands, especially of single persons, by this very thing, still displeased the Lord, and destroy their own souls.” (Notes on the First Book of Moses)

• 
  And of course Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, which intoned “every sperm is sacred, every sperm is great. If a sperm is wasted, God gets quite irate. Let the heathen spill theirs on the dusty ground. God shall make them pay for each sperm that can't be found.”

People have used Onan’s actions, and God’s subsequent killing of him, to prop up this notion for millennia. In particular, it has been used to castigate any young man caught…”pleasuring himself.”

We are not going to address the underlying question of whether every sperm is sacred or not. We will leave our inbox unfilled with emails/questions about abortion, adoption, fertility clinics, stem cell research, and the host of related issues. However, we will address that the use of this passage to address human sexuality in general, and masturbation in particular, is wrong-headed.

Why? Because much of this sexually conservative angst forgets one key fact:

Onan wasn’t masturbating.

The Hard and Firm Reality

Once more for the repressed cheap seats in the back: he wasn’t masturbating. In fact, no one is discussed masturbating in the entire Hebrew Bible/Old Testament.

The closest we get to it is the discussion of wet dreams which, thank you internet, our Card Talk on is one of Google’s highest ranked on the topic as it relates to the Bible and Christianity. Onan’s actions were coitus interruptus, or as the renowned rabbinic thinker Rashi put it: “threshing within, winnowing without.”

So why did God kill Onan for his actions? As Ronald L. Ecker summarizes in And Adam Knew Eve: A Dictionary of Sex in the Bible, “Onan's sin is thus one of omission, specifically non-fulfillment of the levirate law.”

God’s issues with Onan were not sexual,

they were familial.

Martin Luther (1483-1546) understands this reality and goes to town on Onan, calling him “a malicious and incorrigible scoundrel.” Saying his is “a most disgraceful sin. It is far more atrocious than incest and adultery.” But unlike some others, Luther correctly explicates the full nature of Onan’s sins.

Luther condemns him for, among other things, having sex with Tamar and repeatedly “exciting” and “frustrating her” (we can’t be sure if Luther was talking about Tamar’s sexual fulfillment, but we can hope); preventing Tamar from having a child (which was important in the culture), thereby tarnishing her reputation and jeopardizing her future; and says that Onan’s actions show that “he was inflamed with the basest spite and hatred” of his familiar duties, and therefore, “he deserved to be killed by God.”

“For it is a great burden to serve another by raising up and preserving descendants and heirs, to beget children for others, to rear and nourish them, and to leave them a patrimony—and all this in the name of a dead brother. The world knows nothing at all of such love….For it is a difficult task and a mark of outstanding love to be faithful and diligent in protecting the goods of others. Accordingly, this law includes the most ardent love. That worthless fellow refused to exercise it. He preferred polluting himself with a most disgraceful sin to raising up offspring for his brother.” (Luther’s Works, 7:19-21)

If Er did not have an heir, Onan would get one half of his father’s estate when Jacob passed away. However, this would be complicated if Onan’s first child with Tamar was considered Er’s inheritor. Onan is intentionally attempting to dishonor his leverite marriage through pulling out of Tamar.

Here is the kicker: since he is more than willing to have sex with Tamar, but not to honor the terms of a leverite marriage, it could be argued that he is committing adultery! (Remember: according to Leviticus 18, men cannot have sex with their sister-in-laws. Leverite marriage was an exception to this rule).

Onan was self-interested and selfish. He had alternatives to this situation, but he didn’t want to risk the social shame. And it cost him his life.

What will your selfishness cost you?

Perhaps the real the lesson we learn from Onan is not about the solo sating of sexual appetites. At least not directly.

Perhaps we need to take a long hard look at how we prioritize our desires—sexual and otherwise—over the needs of family and friends.

Perhaps, like Onan, you value your personal gain and well-being over that of others.

Perhaps your selfishness is actually worse than his—making pulling out of your sister-in-law look like the lesser of two evils.

But what do we know: we made this game and you probably think we’re going to Hell.