Authors: Patrick Coffin
It happened at that time that Judah went down from his brothers, and turned in to a certain Adullamite, whose name was Hirah. There Judah saw the daughter of a certain Canaanite whose name was Shua; he married her and went in to her, and she conceived and bore a son, and he called his name Er. Again she conceived and bore a son, and she called his name Onan. Yet again she bore a son, and she called his name Shelah. She was in Chezib when she bore him.
And Judah took a wife for Er his first-born, and her name was Tamar. But Er, Judah’s first-born, was wicked in the sight of the L
ORD
; and the L
ORD
slew him. Then Judah said to Onan, “Go in to your brother’s wife, and perform the duty of a brother-in-law to her, and raise up offspring for your brother.” But Onan knew that the offspring would not be his; so when he went in to his brother’s wife he
spilled the semen on the ground
lest he should give offspring to his brother. And
what he did
was
displeasing
in the sight of the L
ORD,
and he slew him also”. (Gen. 38:1–10)
The Onan story interrupts a broader narrative, the story of Joseph, one of the sons of Jacob by Rachel. Chapter 37 ends with Jacob’s tears over what he believes, falsely, is Joseph’s death. Chapter 39 picks up the story with Joseph enjoying the Lord’s special protection in Egypt under Potiphar. The Onan story is wedged between. One might say that Joseph’s fratricidal brothers may have wished, in a manner of speaking, that their father Jacob had practiced Onanism with Rachel.
To review, Onan was the son of Judah and his Canaanite wife Shua, and the nephew of Joseph. He also had an elder brother, Er, and a junior brother, Shelah, the latter of whom had been recently slain by God for an undisclosed sin (many rabbinical commentators say it was the same as Onan’s). Judah requests that Onan “go into” the childless Tamar (Er’s widow) according to the standard custom of the Levirate law.
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Resentful that the child would not be his, whenever they had relations, he deceptively ejaculated outside her body (“he spilled the semen upon the ground”). This rendering does not capture the force of the Hebrew verb
shichet
, which means not to spill or waste, but to act perversely.
Further, what earned Onan the punishment of death wasn’t his intentions, feelings, or motives. It was his
action
, as verse 10 makes clear: “And what he did (
asher asah
in Hebrew) was displeasing in the sight of the L
ORD
, and he slew him also.” That’s the Revised Standard Version. “Displeasing” is translated elsewhere as “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.
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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 has never been preached on, even by the most daring preachers!)
Whenever sexual perversion is treated in the word of God, the language tends to be graphic, sordid. We read of “uncovering nakedness” (the Hebrew word is
galah
, a blunt term meaning to denude or forcefully strip.) Then there is “nakedness” in a shameful sense (e.g., Gen. 9:21–23; Is. 47:3; Ez 16:37).
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A whole study could be done on the Bible’s language for sexual sin. But for our purposes, it is enough to note that the nth degree of this verbal bluntness is reached with the use of the Hebrew verb
shagal
, which is found in Deuteronomy 28.30, Isaiah 13.16, Jeremiah 3.3, Zechariah 14.2, and nowhere else in Scripture.
Shagal
is the Hebrew equivalent of the vulgar term in English for sex (the one that begins with an f.) As a result, when
shagal
was read aloud, the Jews substituted it with
shakab
, meaning violate.
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Shakab
also appears in Genesis 19:34-35 to describe inter-generational incest.
By contrast, whenever Scripture speaks of wholesome sexual activity, it invariably uses gentle, poetic terms that respect the private nature and true dignity of sex as God intended it. There is the beautiful eroticism of the Song of Songs, of Adam “knowing” Eve to produce their son Cain (Gen. 4:1), and the Blessed Mother’s reply to the angel, “How can this be since I have no husband?” (Lk. 1:34).
One of the last books of the Old Testament, the Book of the Prophet Malachi, harkens back to the first, Genesis. Malachi reminds his hearers that marriage is not merely a social contract but a covenant, a sacramental exchange of persons with children as its fruit:
The L
ORD
was witness to the covenant between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant. Has not the one God made and sustained for us the spirit of life? And what does he desire? Godly offspring. (Mal. 2:14–15)
The final passage of Malachi’s last chapter points forward to the arrival of John the Baptist, the “hinge” between the two Covenants, and to the coming of the New Moses, Jesus Christ. The restoration of families is expressed—not unlike the Book of Leviticus—in language that manages to be at once tough and tender:
“Remember the law of my servant Moses, the statutes and ordinances that I commanded him at Horeb for all Israel. Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and terrible day of the L
ORD
comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the land with a curse.” (Mal. 4:4–6)
The New Testament carries forward the implicitly anti-contraceptive outlook of the Old Testament. To borrow from the popular adage, Jesus Christ had a preferential option for children. He pointed to children as models of Christian maturity, and stressed the hospitality we must bear toward them. “Anyone who welcomes a little child like this welcomes me.… See that you never despise any of these little ones, for I tell you their angels in heaven are continually in the presence of my Father in heaven” (see Mt. 18:1–10; 19:13–15; Mk. 10:13–16). The theme of childlikeness is key to Christian identity and is a constant in the writings of the saints and doctors of the Church.
One of Jesus’ most pointed rebukes to His disciples concerned welcoming infants. “Now they were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them; and when the disciples saw it, they rebuked them. But Jesus called them to him, saying, “Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them; for to such belongs the kingdom of God” (Lk. 18:15–16).
In biblical studies, the term
sensus plenior
(Latin for “fuller sense”) refers to the deeper meaning God intended by a passage, which is rooted in—but not limited to—what the human author intended. Might not the Lord’s vehement response to children being prevented from coming to Him have a more-than-literal meaning? Could He have been referring to children who would “come to Him” through the unsterilized sex acts of His followers through time until He returns?
Since He is the Word through whom all things are made (including babies, cf. Jn. 1:1–3), it seems logical to see a parallel between the disciples’
hindering
of the infants and the
hindering
that is the essence of contraception.
The writings of Saint Paul develop and deepen what is implicit in the Gospel. On the subject of Christian marriage in Ephesians 5:21–33, he teaches that wives ought to be submissive to their husbands “in the Lord,” while also emphasizing that the husband is to love his wife “as Christ loved the Church,” which is to say, by giving His entire self—body and soul—to her. The passage is, in fact, recommending the opposite of female slavery and male tyranny. The interpretive key here is the phrase “in the Lord.” The wife’s submission (which means “ordered under”) to the love and sacrificial mission of her husband in no way implies her inferiority. They are utterly equal, and are equally called to “give way” to one another out of love for Christ. Christ Himself was submissive to his Father while remaining equal to Him.
The union of husband and wife is therefore a mirror of Christ’s union with His Bride. At a minimum, this means that the bodily surrender in sexual intercourse must not be tainted by a clinging to self. To simultaneously say with one’s body, “I give you my all,” and “I hold back my all,” is the height of sexual schizophrenia. As we will see in Chapter Five, in His consummation of His marriage vows upon the cross—the ultimate exemplar of love’s willingness to self-donate—Christ held nothing back.
Saint Paul’s writings often address certain errors floating around in the community. In 1 Timothy 2:15, he probably had in mind those false teachers who forbade marriage (see 4:3). The apostle’s conviction that “women will be saved through childbearing” is a clear affirmation of motherhood as integral to married life, and a strong clue as to how the early Church valued fertility. While not an explicit “thou shalt not contracept,” it is another sign that the New Testament viewed marriage as bound up with motherhood. If some birth control is morally okay, then what could be wrong with marriage entirely characterized by it to the point of deliberate childlessness? This would seem to contradict Paul’s whole point.