Was Onan really struck dead by God for masturbating?

Question

Historically, Onan in Genesis 38 has been accused of masturbation, and for this supposed transgression was struck dead. The term Onanism (or in German Onanie) is still used to describe this practice.

Was Onan's sin really masturbation?

Answer 1

The story of Judah and Tamar is an interesting one, to say the least. Judah and Tamar are both explicitly mentioned in Jesus' lineage (Matthew 1 - and Tamar is only one of four women mentioned, all of whom have sordid stories associated with them). In the end, Tamar is going to trick her father-in-law into getting her pregnant, and then avoids death by proving Judah is the father. But the question is about Onan, not Judah...

In the story, Tamar is first wed to Er, the eldest of Judah's sons. Er dies for some unmentioned reason, and Tamar is left without children. Children in that time were important both for the social support for parents in their old age, and for continuance of the family line. Being childless, the law calls for something called 'levirate marriage' - the next oldest brother is required to marry and give the widow the children. This is how Judah's second child, Onan, enters the story.

Then Judah said to Onan, “Sleep with your brother’s wife and fulfill your duty to her as a brother-in-law to raise up offspring for your brother.” But Onan knew that the child would not be his; so whenever he slept with his brother’s wife, he spilled his semen on the ground to keep from providing offspring for his brother. What he did was wicked in the LORD’s sight; so the LORD put him to death also

As you can see, Onan was not masturbating. If anything, you could accuse Onan of coitus interruptus, but not masturbation.

What Onan was doing, however, was using Tamar for sex, but not giving her the child she deserved. One could call this theft - it isn't really the sex that is at issue at all. As the text clearly states, Onan did not want his deceased brother to have an heir. That would have negated his claim on the inheritance, and his new found status as eldest brother.

Interestingly, the story continues with this theme of theft - Judah refuses to allow his third son Shelah, to fufill this duty. (I mean, can you blame him? Two sons dead, and now looking at a third?) Instead of Shelah taking from Tamar, Judah is "stealing" Tamar's due. In the end, however, Tamar tricks Judah into securing her place in the line of Christ.

Just your typical Sunday School story, I know, but a fun one :)

Answer 2

This might depend on the definition of masturbation. The ends achieved by masturbation are not all that different than coitus interruptus, homosexual sex, contraceptive sex, oral sex or anal sex to name a few.

The real question, the one you bring up, is whether Onan died because:

1. sexual immorality, violating the natural law.
2. blasphemy because he broke God's law in producing an heir for his brother.

But, what if Onan has just refused her relations altogether, would have have still been killed for it? I've been doing some bible searching and I haven't found much mention of anyone, besides St. Joseph and David (as an old man), not having relations with a woman (or women) whom he was lawfully married to. So, the real, real question to ask is this, why did Onan consent to 'having relations' with Tamar and not just abstaining? And, if he had refused relations, would he still have been smote? It's impossible to know, but I have to believe that the part about spilling his seed is in there for a reason and you can't just substitute "not laying with" with "seed spilling" and expect the same end result.

One thing is clear, Judah and Shelah weren't punished like Onan was even though God, who knew their hearts, knew their actions produced the same end result.

One thing Catholics believe about the OT, is that everything in it is found in perfection in the New Testament. In my opinion, and maybe you'll see this too, if you compare the relationship between Onan and Tamar and Joseph and Mary, you can see the difference between the right way to live the vocation of marriage chastely and the wrong way to do so.

Answer 3

Onan's sin is most accurately interpreted as withdrawal, or coitus interruptus, as affable geek has said. But interpreting the sin as masturbation is strained even further when you consider the relevant Leviticus passages (my Wikisource translation), chapter 15, verses 16-18:

And a man which a semen discharge will leave, and he bathed all his flesh in water, and he is defiled until evening. And all cloth and all leather which upon it the semen discharge will be, and it will be washed in water, and it is defiled until evening. And a woman, which a man will lay with discharging semen, and they bathed in water, and they are defiled until the evening.

These verses are not solely referring to nocturnal emissions, as the last verse makes clear. It nowhere prohibits masturbation, nor non-standard sex. It simply (sensibly, in my opinion) asks you to wash up afterwards.

Here is a continuation versus 19 and 24 (linked by some irrelevant stuff, same translation, my translation)

¹⁹And a woman who will be discharging, blood will be discharging in her flesh, seven days will she be in her menstrual defilement, and all that touches her will be defiled until the evening... ²⁴And if lay a man will lay with her, and her menstruation will be upon him, and he is defiled seven days, and all the couch which he shall lie upon will be defiled.

The main injunction is against touching blood. There is no special injunction against the necessarily non-procreative sex involved here.

The blood injunction is the main theme of Pentateuch law. The blood is to be drained from animals before eating, it is to be sacrificed to God, and it is not to be eaten or touched. The defiling aspects of blood over and above other discharges are repeated many times, For example, in my translation of Lamentations 4:13-15, on Wikisource:

From the sins of her prophets, the torment of her priests, that spill within her, the blood of saints. they swayed blind outside, were touched by blood, so that their clothes, no one could touch. "Away, defiled!" they called to them, "Away! Away! Do not touch". So they fled, also swayed, and said, among foreigners they will not continue to wander.

The reason for this seems to be that the blood is considered the resting place of the soul. The injunctions on semen are minor by comparison. Consider Leviticus 17:11 ( again, my translation, available on Wikisource ):

Because the soul of the flesh, it is in the blood, and I will give it to you on the altar, to atone for your souls, because it is the blood, which will atone for the soul.

So on the whole, Leviticus doesn't care about masturbation (beyond cleaning up afterward), so it is inconceivable that the even more lax pre-Leviticus code would.

Answer 4

Perhaps, given more time, I might be able to actually flush this answer out, but I feel that the opposing side should be heard.

The Sin of Onan Revisited

What has to be manufactured artificially by external social conditioning is not the belief that masturbation is bad and self-degrading, but the belief that it is good and natural.