Genesis 38:8-10

Onan

The sin of Onan

I. IT WAS PROMPTED BY A LOW MOTIVE. It was as selfish as it was vile. Onan’s design was to preserve the whole inheritance for his own house.

II. IT WAS AN ACT OF WILFUL DISOBEDIENCE TO GOD’S ORDINANCE. Ill deservings of others can be no excuse for our injustice, for our uncharitableness. That which Tamar required, Moses afterward, as from God, commanded--the succession of brothers into the barren bed. Some laws God spake to His Church long ere He wrote them: while the author is certainly known, the voice and the finger of God are worthy of equal respect.

III. IT WAS A DISHONOUR DONE TO HIS OWE BODY. Unchastity in general is a homicidal waste of the generative powers, a demoniac bestiality, an outrage to ancestors, to posterity, and to one’s own life. It is a crime against the image of God, and a degradation below the animal. Onan’s offence, moreover, as committed in marriage, was a most unnatural wickedness, a grievous wrong, and a desecration of the body as the temple of God. It was a proof of the most defective development of what may be called the consciousness of personality, and of personal dignity.

IV. IT WAS AGGRAVATED BY HIS POSITION IN THE COVENANT FAMILY. The Messiah was to descend from the stock of Judah, and for aught he knew from himself. This very Tamar is counted in the genealogy of Christ Matthew 1:3). Herein he did despite to the covenant promise. He rejected an honourable destiny. (T. H. Leale.)

Lessons

Vain parents take little knowledge of God’s judgments in the death of one child when they have others.

2. Special law for the marriage of the deceased brother’s wife by the brother was given of God for special ends.

3. Seed was much desirable and is so in the Church of God; for which such laws were made (Genesis 38:8).

4. Wicked creatures are selfish in duty, therefore unwilling to seek any good but their own.

5. Self-pollution, destruction of the seed of man, envy to brethren, are Onan’s horrid crimes (Genesis 38:9).

6. Onans may be in the visible Church.

7. Such uncleanness is very grievous in God’s sight.

8. Exemplary death may be expected from God by such transgressors (Genesis 38:10). (G. Hughes, B. D.)

Onan’s sin

It must be borne in mind that the propagation of the family name formed one of the most sacred wishes of the Israelites; that “excision” was looked upon as the most awful indication of Divine wrath; and that polygamy itself was so long maintained, because it offers a greater guarantee of offspring. The Hebrews were not a strictly practical people; sentiment and indefinite aspirations had a large share in their religious views and social institutions: at an early period embracing and fostering the hope of a Messianic time, when all the nations of the earth would be united in love and the knowledge of God, they are eminently capable of prizing the permanent existence of their families. The agrarian character of the Mosaic constitution added power to this idea. Landed property was the foundation of the political edifice, and equality its main pillar. Each family was identified with a certain portion of the sacred soil; its extinction was, therefore, more strongly apprehended by the individual, and was injurious to the prosperity of the state, as the accumulation of wealth in the hands of individuals threatened to disturb the equality of the citizens. It is, therefore, impossible to misunderstand the spirit and tendency of the law concerning the marriage with the brother’s widow; it was neither dictated by the desire of preventing the abandoned condition of the widow, or of counteracting some other fancied abuse; its purport is distinctly expressed to have been to procure a descendant to the brother (Genesis 38:8); “that the name of the deceased be preserved upon his inheritance, and that his name be not erased from among his brethren and from the gate of his town” (Ruth 4:10). It may suffice to add, in this place, that similar customs prevailed among the Indians, Persians, and some Italian tribes, and that they are still practised by the Tsherkessians and Tartars, the Gallas in Abyssinia, the Afghans, and other nations. It was in conformity with this law that Judah commanded his second son, Onan, to marry the childless widow of his elder brother. But Onan was not more virtuous than the family to which he belonged: unwilling to maintain his brother’s name, he knew how to frustrate the hopes of Judah. God took away his life for that reckless wickedness. (M. M. Kalisch, Ph. D.)