Don't Know Much About the Bible - Kenneth C. Davis [44]
But it is clear that Joseph was favoured and his brothers didn’t like it. Once more the themes of Genesis are crystallized here. The sibling rivalry, the elevation of the younger over the older brothers, and, with Joseph’s adventures in Egypt, the idea of exile and return—certainly one of the central themes in scripture for Jews and Christians alike. Finally, it is a story of forgiveness.
What was the sin of Onan?
In an interlude to the Joseph narrative is a pair of stories about Judah, the fourth of Leah’s sons, and his family. Judah marries a Canaanite woman and has three sons, Er, Onan, and Shelah. Er marries a woman named Tamar, then commits some unspecified crime and the Lord strikes him dead. Judah then orders Onan to sleep with his dead brother’s widow and raise up children for him, the duty of a brother-in-law at the time. Onan doesn’t want to raise offspring who are his brother’s heirs, so he “spills his seed” on the ground whenever he “went in to his brother’s wife.” God isn’t pleased by his disobedience and also strikes Onan dead.
This brief passage has been the bane of adolescent boys ever since. The so-called “sin of Onan,” later called “onanism,” was mistakenly viewed for centuries as a biblical injunction against masturbation. Onan’s “spilled seed” was the result of coitus interruptus, rather than “self-abuse,” as they used to call masturbation. But failing to fulfill the law, a fraternal duty that required a brother to give his dead brother heirs, cost Onan his life. Pretty rough justice.
But Genesis isn’t quite finished with Tamar, the widow who has seen two lovers die. Judah tells her to wait until his third son, Shelah, grows up. But when Shelah gets older, Judah reneges on the promise that Shelah will take care of Tamar. With her prospects for husband and children dimming, Tamar takes matters into her own hands. She trades in her widow’s clothes for the veil of a prostitute and waits for Judah to pass by. He stops and, presumably failing to recognize his daughter-in-law, enjoys her services with a quickie by the side of the road. Short on shekels, Judah tells the “prostitute” that he will pay her with a kid from his flock some other time. But Tamar shrewdly asks for his signet—a ring used to stamp a signature—and cord and his staff, the ancient equivalent of taking his credit card.
When she becomes pregnant, Tamar is brought to Judah to be executed as a prostitute deserving death. That’s when Tamar shows her trump cards—the signer, cord, and staff belonging to Judah.
This might all seem like a curious but insignificant subplot to the main story of Joseph. But one key footnote to this story is the identity of the offspring of Judah and Tamar. Another set of biblical twins, one sticks a hand out of the womb and is technically the firstborn, so the midwife ties a red string around the hand. Then the second twin is actually delivered first. His name is Perez. The brother with the red cord is named Zerah. Perez is an ancestor of David—and by further extension Jesus.
Who was Joseph’s Pharaoh, and could a slave become Egypt’s prime minister?
So what happened to Joseph? This is part of the brilliance of the Hebrew storytellers who composed the Bible. You can imagine everyone sitting around a desert campfire, listening to the story of Joseph. Just as the storyteller gets to Joseph’s fate, he shifts attention away with the accounts of Judah and Tamar. The audience is left dangling. It is a technique that worked for Charles Dickens, Saturday afternoon serials, and television soap operas. It keeps the audience waiting expectantly.
When we left our hero, Joseph, he was not dangling off a cliff. But he had been sold by his brothers into slavery and taken to Egypt, where he was serving in the house of Potiphar, who is first identified as an Egyptian soldier. But God is with Joseph and he prospers, rising to become overseer in Potiphar’s household. The Bible also says Joseph was “handsome and good looking.