So side-track to another very dysfunctional family led by Judah. His tribe eventually became the dominant Hebrew kingdom of the south. Later all Jews became to be known by the name of his tribe, as the remnants who came back from Babylon were mainly the Judahites.
Meanwhile, in keeping with family tradition, he sows his seeds quite indiscriminately. He fathers a son called Onan who spitefully 'spills his seed' while supposedly performing tribal duties of mating with his late brother's widow. For this act, we now have the term Onanism, representing the act of masturbation. Actually it wasn't masturbation, but 'coitus interruptus'. God punished him for that and put him to death. People believe, the 'sin' was more the disobedience and spite rather than the 'coitus interruptus'. But moralists have used this incident to condemn masturbation.
Then we have some other funny stories about Judah and his scheming 'gatal' daughter-in-law. The significance of this sorry tale leading to the birth of another set of contentious twins Perez and Zerah, also remains shrouded in mystery.
We now move back to the story of Joseph, and his developing relationships with Potiphar and Pharaoh. Joseph gets falsely accused by Potiphar's wife of attempted rape (failed seduction) and gets thrown into jail. Through his astute and gifted reading of dreams, he gets gets a chance to work his way out of jail and to rebuild his career in Pharaoh's court.
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2 comments:
ha! that was one informative piece about 'coitus interruptus'!
I thought the sin was that he was exploiting the sister-in-law for pleasure rather than doing his levirate duty.
I thought this story was suddenly given airtime because of the persistence of Tamar to carry on Judah's lineage - which, like you said, subsequently became the dominant as well as the blessed tribe - the lion of Judah. She was even commended by Judah (38:26)-'she's more righteous than I'.
Regarding this Levirate duty - it is basically the obligation of the husband's brother or nearest kinsman to marry his brother's widow. This is to ensure that there are male offsprings to inherit the dead husband's possessions and also to ensure that the widow is taken care of. The other example of a levirate marriage in the OT is of course that of Boaz and Ruth.
Coming back to the Levirate marriage, I always thought that Boaz was obeying a Mosaic law in marrying Ruth (Deut 25:5-10)and I was right. But, Tamar's incident was waaay before the Mosaic law. Apparently the Hittites were practising this long before the Hebrews. And according to our trusted wikipedia, it was(is?) practised by the Punjabis, Huns, Mongols and TIbetans and South Africans.
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