Biblical Satire Part I: masturbation

Empress Nympho: Ah! But the servant waits while the master baits
--History of the World Pt I

I have not decided whether to make this a daily, weekly, or irregular part of the site. However I have a simple formula : article/pissed of fundies= how often I do this, in short hand

A/P=H

Anyways, today's reading is from

Genesis 38:6-10

⁶And Judah took a wife for Er his firstborn, whose name was Tamar.
⁷And Er, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the sight of the LORD; and the LORD slew him.
⁸And Judah said unto Onan, Go in unto thy brother's wife, and marry her, and raise up seed to thy brother.
⁹And Onan knew that the seed should not be his; and it came to pass, when he went in unto his brother's wife, that he spilled it on the ground, lest that he should give seed to his brother.
¹⁰And the thing which he did displeased the LORD: wherefore he slew him also.

I am not a biblical scholar, but I don't see where the whole masturbation thing comes (heh! heh!) into play here? Seems the Big G was upset about Onan pulling out.

While this may constitute a biblical damnation against the porn ( ahem, adult entertainment) industry we must keep two things in mind:

1) Vivid video had not been invented yet (unless you count some really bizzare
Egyptian statues)
2) Even at that, spilling seed on the ground is not a common fetish for porn. One could argue that Peter North does this all the time but that is more a consequence
of velocity rather than intent.

What's with the smiting anyway. Why was Er considered wicked? What was so bad that he was struck down? We don't know. We are never told; but we can speculate.

I can understand Er being an asshole. Wouldn't you if your parents named you Er. Seriously, WTF is that? Its a colloquial pause for Jesbus' sake. How far could you expect a kid to get in life named after a colloquial pause.

Then there is Onan, his father wants him to bang his dead brother's wife. I can understand Onan's hesistancy, considering what happened to her first husband. Not only does dad want her banged but he wants her preggers. This is quite possibly one of the most sexually liberated families I have ever read about.

I know my father wished me that wink and a nod "good luck" as I headed out the door in my hormone dominated puberty, but ride the hobby horse with my brother's wife...... not so much.

Major serious problems with the phraseology of this passage:

Go in unto thy brother's wife, and marry her, and raise up seed to thy brother.

First off I am holding off on the "Go in unto" part because that's just self-explanatory if not a bit too explicit. I will say this about the "marry her" part, was there a rabbi waiting in the tent?

What's this raising seed to thy brother shit anyways. Think about that, better yet don't. Was Onan supposed to let it fly in the air, defying gravity, and potential outrage, should it have landed on anyone in that increasingly crowded tent?

Again we do not know about Onan's potential, except that he may have been the Peter North of the Old Testament.

So the moral of the story is good friends. If your brother is an asshole and is killed for it, and you are told to bang his wife, at your father's request no less, don't pull out. It apparently pisses off some tempermental desert gods.