"Master of your domain" - Seinfeld

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If you haven’t read chapter 38 of Genesis, I highly recommend it.
It’s 30 verses you won’t forget, reminiscent of chapters 19 and 34 of Genesis.

If you’ll recall, in chapter 19 the evil folks of Sodom try to rape two angels, God destroys Sodom and then Lot’s daughters get their dad drunk and have sex with him.
In chapter 34, Jacob’s daughter Dina is raped by a prince of Shechem, so her brothers (Simeon and Levi) murder the prince and every male citizen of Schechem… after they’ve all circumcised themselves.

Like these two chapters, chapter 38 is often overlooked in Sunday/Hebrew School studies.
Probably because it is lewd, lascivious and violent.
In other words— not to be missed!


Smack-dab in the middle of the Joseph story (between his becoming a slave and moving to Egypt) we have this interlude about his step-brother!

I’ll summarize Genesis, ch. 38 for you:

Judah, on of Jacob’s 11 sons, marries Shuah. They have three sons: Er, Onan, and Shelah.

Er marries a girl named Tamar.

God kills Er.
So Judah tells his second-born son, Onan, to marry Tamar, as was the custom.


Onan refuses. Instead, he (ahem)... pleasures himself.
God kills Onan.

But wait, it gets better!

Judah’s wife dies (count it up— the poor guy’s now lost two sons and a wife).

Then Tamar, wearing a veil, propositions Judah. Judah “thought her to be an harlot… for he knew not that she was his daughter in law” (v.15,16).
She asks for his bracelets, signet ring, and staff.
“And he gave it her, and he came in unto her, and she conceived by him” (v.18)

Three months later, Judah is told “Tamar thy daughter in law hath played the harlot, and behold she is with child.”
Judah, ever compassionate, says, “Bring her forth and let her be burnt”
(v.24).
Wow, so sensitive, Judah.

But Tamar, ever the shrewd lady, whips our her father-in-law’s ring, bracelets and staff and says, “By the man whose these are, am I with child”
(v.25)

Judah is humbled and “acknowledged them, and said, ‘She hath been more righteous than I’” (v.26). And they let Tamar live, she gives birth to twins, all’s well…


Oh, and by the way, it says about Judah and Tamar’s physical relationship—“he knew her again no more” (v.26).

So… he learned HIS lesson.

“Hey, Judah— No more cussing, no fighting, and absolutely, positively… no more incest! And I mean it this time.”

(sigh)

Okay, where to begin?

This is like the movie “Chinatown” meets “Dynasty,” with a hint of “There’s Something About Mary.”

Now, a few incidentals:

After Er died, Onan was obligated to marry Tamar, his dead brother’s widow (a.k.a., a Levirate marriage: if a married man dies before having kids, the dead man’s brother must marry his widow, to perpetuate the family name of the eldest son, Deut. 25:5).

Let’s look at verses 7 through 10, from Er’s death to Onan’s death, four of the most intriguing verses in the Bible:

“And Er, Judah’s firstborn, was wicked in the sight of the LORD; and the LORD slew him.

And Judah said unto Onan, Go in unto thy brother’s wife, and marry her, and raise up seed to thy brother.

And Onan knew that the seed should not be his; and it came to pass, when he went in unto his brother’s wife, that he spilled it on the ground, lest that he should give seed to his brother.

And the thing which he did displeased the Lord wherefore he slew him also” (v.7-10).

Remember “wherefore” means “(that’s) why” (i.e., “Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?”)

Let’s ask Rashi, the great 11th century French Rabbi, who wrote the first comprehensive commentary on the (Hebrew) Bible and the Talmud.

Rashi says the word “also” means God killed Onan for the same reason God killed Er. We can therefore deduce that Er must have also been, um… sanding the obelisk, so God killed him.
Then when Onan did the same thing, God “slew him also.”

Rashi explains that Er did not want to impregnate Tamar, believing that “she should not bear children and her beauty thereby become impaired” (Talmud, Yevamot 34b).

Okay, that kinda makes sense. He didn’t want his wife to lose her figure.
But it’s still selfish.
As we know, the perpetuation of mankind is more important that keeping fit.
The first commandment of the entire Bible: “…God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply…(Genesis 1:28).

Now, some say the real sin of Onan was spite! He resented the marriage to his sister-in-law, especially because “the seed should not be his”-- any kids they’d have would be counted as his dead brother’s offspring, not his own!

So maybe the rule is… don’t have angry sex?

By the way—this is how we get the word onanism, referring to self-gratification, “coitus interruptus,” or … taking little Elvis to Graceland.

Okay, here’s what I think happened—

In Genesis (ch.1), people are told to multiply, have kids.
Then, later in Genesis (ch.38) a bitter brother-in-law refuses to impregnate his dead brother’s sister. Somehow, over the years, this morphed into “Only have sex for procreation, don’t shake hands with RumpleForeskin in the privacy of your own room, by yourself.”

a.k.a., “Don’t spill your seed”
—whenever I read this phrase I imagine the Three Stooges carrying three huge oil drums through the living of a pristine mansion, careful not to spill them (what the drums are filled with—I’d rather not think about that).
Not sure why.

According to Maimonides, the great 12th century Jewish philosopher, pleasuring oneself is strictly forbidden and is regarded as equivalent to killing a human being (Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Issurei Biya 21:18).

Say what???

Okay, maybe Maimonides wasn’t so great.

Judaism stuck with this prohibition against vistiting Thumbelina and her four friends” and, naturally, the Catholic Church took this ball of guilt and ran with it.

So it’s akin to murder!

Ironic, really, because if a teenaged male does not “gratify himself”, he quite possibly WILL kill somebody.

“We have to do it. It’s a part of our lifestyle. Like shaving.”
-- Seinfeld

“We just need the release… For guys, it’s just something we need to do so we don’t murder people. It’s just maintenance, open the… valve.”
Louis C.K.


Bottom line?
We are not struggling to survive, deathly dependent on perpetuating our species (like Adam and Eve). And, hopefully, when you get romantic (either alone or with a partner) you aren’t stewing in resentment and spite, like Onan (most likely) was.

So… times change. And an imagination is a terrible thing to waste.

“I don’t want anybody else, when I think about you…”
-- The Divinyls
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