Protect, Nurture, Respect

Love protects, nurtures and respects. Onan could have protected, nurtured and respected himself, Tamar, Judah, Shelah and other family and friends by saying no to marrying Tamar (Genesis 38). Onan didn't love Tamar, and his lack of love was revealed.

Onan's older brother, Er, was first married to Tamar, but Er died without having a child with Tamar. Judah, Onan's father, asked Onan to marry Tamar. Onan said yes to marrying Tamar while his heart said no. After the marriage began Onan refused to become a good husband. Onan denied Tamar satisfying sex, children, love and respect. He was not her best friend and advocate, tender cultivator of creative and compassionate ways to make her life the best life possible. There was a lack of wonder at being married and free to kiss places previously hidden, a lack of yearning to taste and touch Tamar, a lack of excitement to enter her mound of wheat bordered by lilies holding the promise of a portal to paradise. With Onan martial sex was perfunctory instead of pleasing. Genesis 38:9 New Living Translation Bible says, "But Onan was not willing to have a child who would not be his own heir. So whenever he had intercourse with his brother's wife, he spilled the semen on the ground. This prevented her from having a child who would belong to his brother."

Tamar had sex appeal; later Onan's father, Judah, went into her. Onan didn't appreciate Tamar's sexuality because Onan was sexually sinning.

Since Onan decided to say yes to marrying Tamar instead of no he had an obligation to respect her, to love her, to become a good husband to her. Whatever it took to change his heart, to get over Tamar having been his older brother's wife, Onan needed to work with God, and do it. The disgust and hatred he showed Tamar displeased God. God likes joyful, loving, sexually beautiful marriages.

Also God had a bigger plan for Onan's and Tamar's marriage than their personal happiness. The Christ's natural descent was to come through the offspring of Judah of which Onan was one. So Onan's sex practices were getting in God's way. Since Onan refused to change God put Onan out of the way. Tamar became a widow again. Judah lost another son. Shelah lost another brother. Family and friends lost a loved one.

What else could Onan have done toward a good destiny?