6 ms·
> Modern academics have a perfectly reasonable explanation for all of this. It's only perfectly reasonable if you aren't familiar with the broader context. Br
by jawns 3y ago
> Modern academics have a perfectly reasonable explanation for all of this.
It's only perfectly reasonable if you aren't familiar with the broader context.
Breaking the levirate marriage custom was not in itself considered an action worthy of severe punishment. Indeed, there was a well-defined ceremony, spelled out in Deuteronomy 25:8-10 [1], intended to humiliate a man who refuses to marry his brother's widow. But being given an embarrassing nickname is a far cry from being smote by God. And if you get to inherit your brother's riches, it might be a fair price to pay.
But Onan's sin is described as something he did, rather than something he failed to do. It is pretty clear, when you look at the text the way someone of that time would have looked at it, that Onan's offense was not merely that he was being selfish, but that he was employing a method that severed the procreative element of the sexual act. He could have refused to marry Tamar. He could have refused to have sex with Tamar. But instead he fulfilled the letter of the levirate marriage custom without fulfilling its spirit. He used her for his own sexual satisfaction, but then deprived her of the natural ends of that action.
[1] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy%2025%3A8-10&version=NIV https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy%202...
- mariusor 3y ago> embarrassing nickname Which one was that?
- jihadjihad 3y agoI am assuming GP is referring to Onan in Hebrew: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D7%90%D7%95%D7%A0%D7%9F#Hebrew https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D7%90%D7%95%D7%A0%D7%9F#Hebr... Edit: possibly Halizah [0] instead? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halizah https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halizah Further edit: didn't see the [1] in GP...whoops
- yorwba 3y agoFor failing to click the source link in the top comment, your line shall be known in Israel as The Family of the Unsandaled. [1]
- anonymous_sorry 3y ago> severed the procreative element of the sexual act So by that reading it was only wrong because the understood purpose is the whole arrangement was to give Tamar a chance to have a child, which she was entitled to expect when Onan married her? It therefore has no bearing on what consensual activities couples may engaged in where no such commitment has been made?
- ajkjk 3y agoWell yes it's from literally biblical times. The social norms were rather different.
- btilly 3y agoTo be fair, historically it is our social norms that are more of an aberration. Allowing a couple to get divorced simply because both want to didn't become universal in the USA until about a decade ago. Laws treating the rape of a wife as a crime against her husband were common in the 1960s. Laws prohibiting doctors from helping married couples have access to birth control lasted into the 1960s. All of these were based on the idea that marriage was an institution ensuring the continuity of future generations to the family and society. Because the broader family and society had a vested interest in the results of the marriage, the people involved had a responsibility to those around them. This was a widely accepted social norm just a few decades ago.
- ajkjk 3y agoSure, what's your point? We like our new norms better (with some qualifications -- a lot of things are still changing and being figured out).
- Spivak 3y agoI don't know why you're being downvoted, our current norms are without question far far better but they are the outlier for human history. Massive technological advancement came with massive social advancements in a really short timespan all things considered. I'm glad that making lots of babies is no longer something that's necessary for the survival of society and the norms that pressure (force) everyone healthy enough to have children to do so have fallen by the wayside as a result.
- tomrod 3y agoWhole lotta folks gonna be sad if your interpretation means the rhythm method of birth control is verboten in the eyes of the Canaanite pantheon. Good thing we have modern birth control methods and everyone is cool with them.