Free Sex Au Naturel by Patrick Coffin Page B

“offensive” (New Jerusalem Bible), “wicked” (New International Version, King James, Douay-Rheims), “evil” (American Standard Version), and detestabilem (Latin Vulgate).
     
    The Onan passage, incidentally, is the basis for the Orthodox Jewish prohibition of condoms and any “spilling of the seed.” There is a disarmingly obvious point to the passage: Onan was struck dead because he withdrew from an act of intercourse and ejaculated outside Tamar’s body. The most common attempt at getting around this commonsensical conclusion is the claim that Onan was punished for evading his brotherly duty vis-à-vis the Levirate Law, or for failing to give Tamar what she was owed).
     
    But the “Levirate breach only” interpretation does not work. First of all, God is never presented in Scripture as a capricious deity who doles out capital punishment for minor infractions or foibles.
     
    Second, as mentioned, the key verse (v. 10) refers specifically to what Onan did, to his act of withdrawal. And note that verse nine indicates that his relations with Tamar were an ongoing affair and not a one-night stand. The Revised Standard Version cited above uses the word “when” (“ when he went into his brother’s wife”) but the sense of the original Hebrew is whenever , which is the way it appears in the New American Bible, and others as well. Onan was repeatedly using his brother’s widow for his own pleasure. 7
     
    Third, and most important, there was indeed a punishment for violating the Law of the Levirate, and you can find it in Deuteronomy 25 (see below). If a brother declined to have relations with his late brother’s widow, she could subject him to a ritual of humiliation in which she would spit in his face, take off his sandals, and call him “House of the Unshod of Israel.” While the Levirate custom was pro-life and had many practical benefits, Onan’s sin was not merely to violate it (which he did!) After all, both Onan’s father and his other brother Shelah were also guilty of violating the Levirate law, but their chosen means of evasion were not contraceptive.
     
    No, the key difference is that Onan went through the motions of fulfilling his family duty, and yet withheld the very element that would have made him faithful to it. Here is the text:
     
    If brothers dwell together, and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the dead shall not be married outside the family to a stranger; her husband’s brother shall go in to her, and take her as his wife, and perform the duty of a husband’s brother to her. And the first son whom she bears shall succeed to the name of his brother who is dead, that his name may not be blotted out of Israel. And if the man does not wish to take his brother’s wife, then his brother’s wife shall go up to the gate to the elders, 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 city shall call him, and speak to him: and if he persists, saying, “I do not wish to take her,” then his brother’s wife shall go up to him in the presence of the elders, and pull his sandal off his foot, and spit in his face; and she shall answer and say, “So shall it be done to the man who does not build up his brother’s house.” And the name of his house shall be called in Israel, the House of him that had his sandal pulled off. (Deut. 25:5–10)
     
     
    Embarrassing and unpleasant, but hardly the death penalty. Notice the blunt description in Genesis 38, verse nine, “He spilled the semen on the ground.” The only other biblical reference to the “spilling of seed” is in Ezekiel’s prophetic allegory of the infidelities, rendered by the New International Version as: “There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses” (Ezek. 23:20). (Chances are pretty good that this passage