Tea Party Exegesis

I was disappointed to learn in the New York Times that Jimmy Carter, certainly our best ex-president, thinks that the story of Onan is about masturbation. I don't care all that much about Onan. It has been many years since I lived anywhere masturbation was thought to be a hot topic for Christian ethics, let alone for biblical exegesis. But I actually do care about the story of Tamar. She is one of my favorite women in the world and Onan plays a bit part in the story of Tamar, so I guess I'm going to have to get into it after all. For anyone who wonders why I might be such a fan of Tamar, I have put my reasons in this telling of her story. She is, in any case, a good deal more interesting than Christine O'Donnell.

Oh yes. Christine O'Donnell is the Tea Party candidate for the office of U. S. Senator from Delaware. Maureen Dowd, a regular New York Times columnist, reported in her column this morning that Ms. O'Donnell once said, "The Bible says that lust in our heart is committing adultery, so you can't masturbate without lust." Well, OK, there's some biblical work to be done there, but that's Christine O'Donnell and I don't think I've got that kind of time. But Jimmy Carter told Maureen Dowd, she says, that the Old Testament story of Onan "warns against wasting thy seed on the ground."

It doesn't, actually, and Jimmy Carter has taught a Sunday School class in Plains, Georgia for many years and he ought to know that. If you care about exegesis at all, the first question you need to ask of a story is, "What is it about?" If you are going to draw any lessons from it, you need at least to know what it is about. The story of Tamar is about being obedient to God's laws. And what law is involved here? Levirate marriage.

We will have to pause momentarily to consider levirate marriage. That may have been the part of the story that stopped Robert Redford from seriously considering my proposal that Tamar was the kind of story he should make a movie of. Something stopped him, at any rate. The best I got back was a snotty letter from one of his henchpersons. Levirate marriage shows how important it was for Israelites to have male descendants in every clan line. And how do we do that? If a son does not have a male heir (and Tamar's husband, Er, did not have one), his next younger brother is to impregnate her and the resulting son would be considered "the son of Er" for clan purposes.

Onan was the next younger brother and producing an heir for Er was his job. He didn't want to do that job. We don't know why. Maybe he hated Er. Maybe he didn't like having his father, Judah, send him to Tamar as a favor to Er. In any case, Onan did whatever he did for the purpose of seeing to it that he did not produce an heir for his brother, E, as God had commanded. God was not happy and killed Onan for that.

It was Judah's job, as head of the clan, to move the responsibility down to the next son. He didn't. The reasons are a little complicated. He may have reasoned that he had already lost two sons to Tamar and was not willing to risk a third. Also the third son was not yet old enough. In any case, Judah failed God by refusing to send the third son in the same way that Onan failed in refusing to impregnate Tamar. And it is entirely possible that God's vengeance would have fallen next on Judah.

Actually, following that line of speculation, Tamar might have saved Judah's life by seducing him, getting herself pregnant, and producing heirs, finally, for her dead husband, Er. Two heirs,in fact, since she gave birth to twins, Perez and Zerah. And that's how Tamar winds up in Matthew's account of the genealogy of the Messiah. She was the one who was faithful to God, although it took the seduction of her father-in-law to get the job done.

Jimmy. Christine. That's what the story is about. Whatever lessons we might learn from it probably ought to feature "being obedient to God" as the first Powerpoint slide. Of course, I wouldn't argue that levirate marriage is required in the 21st Century. Ms. O'Donnell might. Mr. Carter might. But I don't. I do argue that "obedience to God" is still a crucial concept and anyone who thinks of himself or herself as a follower of this God might want to give some thought to just what "obedience" might mean right now. At least it's worth asking.