NFP and contraception

[Mary_Gail_36]

Perhaps this father needs to check his time line.

Onan lived more than 400 years before the Old Covenant was established, and more like 500 years before Deuteronomy occurred.

So, Onan wasn’t exactly bound to that Covenant.

Sure, but if God didn’t think it was a deadly sin to not take your brother’s wife, and father a child for her in 500 years, He would not have thought so for Onan…God doesn’t change.

Say Onan would only want relations on days when he thought she was infertile and ordered her “Count the days!”

His wife was a crafty one wasn’t she?

She was able to disguise herself as a prostitute to sleep with her father in law…so I think she would have been able to circumvent the day counting (which would not have worked anyway) She could have asked her grandmother- in-law for some mandrakes. She could have made herself look extra beautiful and desireable. There are many ways for a wife to get her husband to provide marital debt. She could have gotten him drunk. The OT is filled with crafty ladies.

Onan could have refused to take her at all, and her remedy could have been to wait for the third brother to be old enough.

Onan was punished for spilling his seed. Not for not wanting Tamar’s child.

 

[Muze]

Sure, but if God didn’t think it was a deadly sin to not take your brother’s wife, and father a child for her in 500 years, He would not have thought so for Onan…God doesn’t change.

God didn’t think it was a sin for Abraham to have 2 wives, or for Israel to have 4… does this mean the Church thinks polygamy is acceptable?

Say Onan would only want relations on days when he thought she was infertile and ordered her “Count the days!”

In that day, yes.

His wife was a crafty one wasn’t she?

Once she realized that Judah wasn’t doing his job, yeah.

She was able to disguise herself as a prostitute to sleep with her father in law…so I think she would have been able to circumvent the day counting (which would not have worked anyway) She could have asked her grandmother- in-law for some mandrakes. She could have made herself look extra beautiful and desireable. There are many ways for a wife to get her husband to provide marital debt. She could have gotten him drunk. The OT is filled with crafty ladies.

And all of this is dodging the question:

Had Onan used NFP to avoid getting Tamar pregnant, would he have been put to death?

Clearly the answer is “YES”, and that only further exposed by the dancing and attempts to get around answering the question.

Onan could have refused to take her at all, and her remedy could have been to wait for the third brother to be old enough.

In which case he would have been put to death for refusing what was required of him. Clearly from the text, the requirement and consequence are far stonger than what they were in the days of Deuteronomy.

Onan was punished for spilling his seed. Not for not wanting Tamar’s child.

So, avoiding impregnating her without spilling his seed would have been acceptable?

Seriously?

 

[Mary_Gail_36]

Please explain how he could have used NFP without her consent? An attempt at completed sex just once could have gotten her pregnant.

And he could have refused to marry her and said wait for my younger brother.

Jesus spoke about divorce saying that God allowed things before because of hardended hearts. For this reason he allowed polygamy.

But he never said something was punishable by death then it is not a sin anymore.

There is a difference between having sex only 14 days a month (rudimentary nfp, if that existed at the time) to doing coitus interuptus every act.

I think you don’t want to see it…I’m not dodging any question.

The text says deliberately “spilling his seed” Why mention that specific act if that specific act was not sinful?

Doesn’t say, he refused to be with her.

 

[Muze]

Please explain how he could have used NFP without her consent? An attempt at completed sex just once could have gotten her pregnant.

Back in those days, women were virtually slaves. They were required to obey their husbands. If he told her to take her temperature every day, she would have to do it. There was no matter of consent.

Also, he didn’t have to tell her that he was using a method to avoid pregnancy. He could simply have told her to do it.

Furthermore, you’re still dodging the question:

Would Onan have been put to death for avoidng procreation using NFP?

It’s a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question.

And he could have refused to marry her and said wait for my younger brother.

Actually, he couldn’t. The duty was HIS as the next one in line.

Jesus spoke about divorce saying that God allowed things before because of hardended hearts. For this reason he allowed polygamy.

Um… nothing anywhere in Scripture about polygamy being allowed for hardened hearts…

Are you saying that David’s heart was hard? Because God said it was after His own heart.

But he never said something was punishable by death then it is not a sin anymore.

But the point is that things change. There are cultural reasons for things to be more important at one time and less at another.

A difference of 500 years would create such a difference.

There is a difference between having sex only 14 days a month (rudimentary nfp, if that existed at the time) to doing coitus interuptus every act.

But the result is the same. The goal was pregnancy. The means to avoid it is irrelevant.

I think you don’t want to see it…I’m not dodging any question.

You most certainly are, by saying that he couldn’t do it without her.

The text says deliberately “spilling his seed” Why mention that specific act if that specific act was not sinful?

Because that was the means by which the sin was committed. The author is ensuring that everyone KNOWS that Onan was the cause of a lack of pregnancy, and not God.

Read the passage:

9But Onan knew that the offspring would not be his. So whenever he went in to his brother’s wife he would waste the semen on the ground, so as not to give offspring to his brother.

Notice that not giving offspring is mentioned twice. This is clearly the emphasis of the author, and the nature of the sin.

Are you say that it would have been OK for Onan to** intentionally avoid **giving his brother offspring, if he hadn’t spilled his seed on the ground?

Seriously?

 

[choose_to_love]

@Muze

First, with all respect, on a thread of over 200 posts, “clearly” is not an adverb that can be used to support one’s position - - I noticed quite a few of those in the most recent exchange with Mary gail.

Yes, let’s read the passage. Verse 10, immediately following the one you selected - - “and therefore the Lord slew him, because he did a detestable thing.” Because he intended a detestable thing, i.e., to deny a child to his brother’s house? No, because he did a detestable thing. It seems to me the detestable thing refers to the spilling of the seed in the immediately preceding verse, which is also the only action referenced in the verse.

I’ll take a shot at your larger question, although I’m not sure I will reach an answer. Current understanding of proper use of NFP includes a just reason to use it. The whole point of taking the deceased brother’s wife as the younger brother’s wife is to produce an offspring. I think it would be fair to say from the evidence in the chapter that Onan and Tamar did not have just reasons to postpone pregnancy, right? So use of NFP without a just reason makes its use illicit

Would that justify the heavenly lightning strike? I do not think so, as the marital act wouild remain properly ordered. Given the later codification that failure to attempt the duty resulted in a punishment of public humilitation, I don’t think that Onan’s attempted use of NFP would have resulted in the consequence that disordering the act through coitus interruptus did.

 

[Abu]

Chrono13, #294
Speaking the truth is never a mark of a dissenter.

The mark of the dissenter is on you for you publicly oppose the Magisterium, with your jaundiced opinion which you fantasise as “truth”, against Pope Pius XI who emphatically declared “openly departing from the uninterrupted Christian tradition” when His Holiness quotes St Augustine in Casti Connubii, 56.

These quotes charish the marriage, but not the marital act

False as always – the separation is in your prejudice against the condemnation of contraception from the beginning.

St. John Chrysostom:
“**The procreation of children **in marriage is the ‘heritage’ and ‘reward’ of the Lord; a blessing of God (cf. Psalm 127:3). It is the natural result of the act of sexual intercourse in marriage, which is a sacred union through which God Himself joins the two together into ‘one flesh’ (Genesis 1-2, Matthew 19, Mark 10, Ephesians 5, et. al.). The procreation of children is not in itself the sole purpose of marriage, but a marriage without the desire for children, and the prayer to God to bear and nurture them, is contrary to the ‘sacrament of love.’” 19
Note
19. St. John Chrysostom, Homily on Ephesians 20, PG.

The obstruction of the marital act by evil deeds or intention is the condemnation of contraception which exists from the beginning.

Warrior1979 (re Onan)
Then the issue of why God is meting out justice unevenly arises. Why?

As there is never any injustice in God it is a non sequitur. Further (post #273), not everything that happened was written down.

 

[Mary_Gail_36]

Back in those days, women were virtually slaves. They were required to obey their husbands. If he told her to take her temperature every day, she would have to do it. There was no matter of consent.

Also, he didn’t have to tell her that he was using a method to avoid pregnancy. He could simply have told her to do it.

Furthermore, you’re still dodging the question:

Would Onan have been put to death for avoidng procreation using NFP?

It’s a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question.

Actually, he couldn’t. The duty was HIS as the next one in line.

Um… nothing anywhere in Scripture about polygamy being allowed for hardened hearts…

Are you saying that David’s heart was hard? Because God said it was after His own heart.

But the point is that things change. There are cultural reasons for things to be more important at one time and less at another.

A difference of 500 years would create such a difference.

But the result is the same. The goal was pregnancy. The means to avoid it is irrelevant.

You most certainly are, by saying that he couldn’t do it without her.

Because that was the means by which the sin was committed. The author is ensuring that everyone KNOWS that Onan was the cause of a lack of pregnancy, and not God.

Read the passage:

9But Onan knew that the offspring would not be his. So whenever he went in to his brother’s wife he would waste the semen on the ground, so as not to give offspring to his brother.

Notice that not giving offspring is mentioned twice. This is clearly the emphasis of the author, and the nature of the sin.

Are you say that it would have been OK for Onan to** intentionally avoid **giving his brother offspring, if he hadn’t spilled his seed on the ground?

Seriously?

At Onan’s time

1. There were no thermometers for him to order his virtual slave of a wife to use. : And pretend there were, Tamar, (the woman who disguised herself as a prostiitute to bed her Father in law) could say, "Today is a non fertile day honey…
2. At the time also, it was believed that the man provided the seed and it grew in the woman to a child. There was not knowledge of women providing an egg to be fertilized.

Would he have been punished for not sleeping with her at all and refusing to take her as a wife?

It does not seem logical, since the punishment later described was for the woman to spit at the man and hit him with a sandal.

So would he be punished for not sleeping with her every day? or just a few times a month?

He was punished for spilling his seed.

Um… nothing anywhere in Scripture about polygamy being allowed for hardened hearts…

No Jesus said it about divorce. But it isn’t stretching the mind too much if divorce and remarriage is not allowed, polygamy is also not allowed.

 

[Abu]

Muze, #297
Perhaps this father needs to check his time line.
Onan lived more than 400 years before the Old Covenant was established, and more like 500 years before Deuteronomy occurred.
So, Onan wasn’t exactly bound to that Covenant.

How strange, since the false claim ignores the Levirate Law:
“There are some who argue that the severe punishment of God upon Onan was for his failure to fulfill the Levirate law of raising up offspring; however, the punishment for this was specified by God as recorded in the book of Deuteronomy.”
This poster continues to evade that fact.

Orthodox Jews have always interpreted the story of Onan in the same way: “The classical Jewish commentators—who can scarcely be accused of ignorance regarding Hebrew language, customs, law, and biblical literary genres—certainly saw in this passage of Scripture a condemnation of both unnatural intercourse and masturbation as such. A typical traditional Jewish commentary puts it thus: “[Onan] misused the organs God gave him for propagating the race to unnaturally satisfy his own lust, and he was therefore deserving of death.”

rtforum.org/lt/lt67.html
“That Onan’s unnatural act as such is condemned as sinful in Gen. 38: 9-10 was an interpretation held by the Fathers and Doctors of the Catholic Church, by the Protestant Reformers, and by nearly all celibate and married theologians of all Christian denominations until the early years of this century, when some exegetes began to approach the text with preconceptions deriving from the sexual decadence of modern Western culture and its exaggerated concern for ‘over-population.’ ” [See Pope Pius XI, Encyclical on Christian Marriage, *Casti Connubii, 1930, #55. Note 45.].

References to “NFP” in the days of Onan or the early Church are ludicrous, as there was no awareness of the real nature of fertility periods until the mid-nineteenth century, and thermometers didn’t exist. Onan used withdrawal, which has nothing to do with Natural Birth Regulation (or NFP), and is a separate sin unto itself. Onan was killed by God for the crime of “spilling his seed on the ground”, not for avoiding “fathering a child”.

 

[Chrono13]

The mark of the dissenter is on you for you publicly oppose the Magisterium, with your jaundiced opinion which you fantasise as “truth”, against Pope Pius XI who emphatically declared “openly departing from the uninterrupted Christian tradition” when His Holiness quotes St Augustine in Casti Connubii, 56.

I do not oppose the Magisterium. I just search how to be loyal to it, and to holy tradition as it is.

False as always – the separation is in your prejudice against the condemnation of contraception from the beginning.

St. John Chrysostom:
“**The procreation of children **in marriage is the ‘heritage’ and ‘reward’ of the Lord; a blessing of God (cf. Psalm 127:3). It is the natural result of the act of sexual intercourse in marriage, which is a sacred union through which God Himself joins the two together into ‘one flesh’ (Genesis 1-2, Matthew 19, Mark 10, Ephesians 5, et. al.). The procreation of children is not in itself the sole purpose of marriage, but a marriage without the desire for children, and the prayer to God to bear and nurture them, is contrary to the ‘sacrament of love.’” 19
Note
19. St. John Chrysostom, Homily on Ephesians 20, PG.

As I said- these verses concentrate on marriage as sociological bond, not sexuality as sacramental act (or reflection of God’s love). Marriage is not only for procreation, but sexuality is, altough Chrysostom was less stoic then other Church Fathers. He concentrated more on “marital debt” part of the teaching.

The obstruction of the marital act by evil deeds or intention is the condemnation of contraception which exists from the beginning.

From the beginning, and until 19th century, to have intercourse without desire to beget was sinful. You could have been open to life and hate contraception, it wouldn’t effect the morality of intercourse, if the intent was not procreation.

 

[Chrono13]

References to “NFP” in the days of Onan or the early Church are ludicrous, as there was no awareness of the real nature of fertility periods until the mid-nineteenth century, and thermometers didn’t exist. Onan used withdrawal, which has nothing to do with Natural Birth Regulation (or NFP), and is a separate sin unto itself. Onan was killed by God for the crime of “spilling his seed on the ground”, not for avoiding “fathering a child”.

This is unacceptable. The fertility periods and their rhythm were known to Church, as proven by St. Augustine of Hippo’s writings in 4th century.

And you know that. The tradition has been proven to you many times during this discussion.

 

[Debora123]

Muze,

I would have to say that I am definitely with you in regards to the NFP vs barrier contraception issue. I have been a Catholic my whole life and have always been passionate about following Church “rules”. (hormonal contraception I am definitely against, bc it can destroy a newly conceived baby and is harmful to a woman’s body.)

However, like you, I could not, and still cannot, make sense of the fact that barrier contraception is intrinsically evil, while the natural, “Church approved” method is not. I’ve read multiple books about it, heard speeches, discussed the issue in great depth here on this very forum, prayed about it… and it all still seems like a non nonsensical man made rule that has absolutely no concrete basis. I can’t even begin to tell you all the points I’ve made against the contraception rule that no one has been able to answer without contradicting themselves or ultimately resorting the the old “it’s wrong bc the Church says so” speech.

Nonetheless, I tried to do it the Church’s way, just like I’ve done with everything else in my life. My husband and I dated for 4 years before we finally got married about a year ago. We were both devout Catholics and were determined to do things right. It was very difficult for us to remain chaste in the four years that we were madly in love prior to getting married. But we were both in school and didn’t have the money or means of getting married until after we graduated. So we waited for four years and remained virgins. Six months before our wedding day we spent $500 on an NFP machine to aid me in my charting so that we could be safe and good to go once we were married.

I charted and used my NFP machine everyday. I did not understand why I needed to use NFP and couldn’t just use condoms, but I spent a great deal of time and money doing it anyway. I trusted the Church. The Church told me NFP would help my marriage. The Church told me I would have an amazing and more satisfying sex life if I used NFP.

**The Church was wrong. **

My husband and I have been married for about a year and we are still very young and in no condition whatsoever to have a child yet - neither emotionally nor financially nor stability-wise. So yes, we used NFP as was planned for the first several months of our marriage. Contrary to what the Church has always told me, NFP did nothing but hurt our marriage. We could only have sex for 2 weeks out of each month. The other week and a half was my “fertile time,” and the other few days were my heavy menstruating days.

We were both young when we married (and still are), and we were both virgins. We had no idea how to have sex, so considering we only had 2 weeks each month to do it, we didn’t get good enough practice to get good at it or get used to it. Furthermore, NFP put tremendous pressure in our sex lives, hindering the experience even more. Since we could only have sex for 2 weeks out of the month, we felt tremendous pressure to have lots of sex, and lots of good sex in those 2 weeks, because we knew it would be a while till we could do it again. This pressure was not a good thing to put on 2 young people who are newly weds and experiencing sex for the first time.

The whole experience added a lot of frustration and stress on our marriage, and pressure on both of us in the bedroom. So much so that both our sex drives became basically non existent. We felt like we had been lied to. We were told that NFP was good for our marriage… that it would help our marriage. We did everything right. We waited till we were married, we were both good, devout Catholics, we used NFP against our better judgement, and instead we got nights after nights of tears and fights over something that was supposed to be a good thing - marital sex.

We finally, after much deliberation and prayer, made the decision to go ahead and use condoms on my fertile days. This way we didn’t have a short, 2 week window - we had sex with no condom during my infertile time, and we had sex with a condom during my fertile time. And I must say, this has been SO much better for us. We no longer perceive sex as being a source of stress. Our sex is so much more intimate and passionate now, and it has really helped our marriage.

This whole experience hurt my relationship with the Church for a while. As I said, it made me feel like I had been lied to. But I have moved on from that point and have learned a lot since then. To my surprise, I’ve also recently learned that my parents too, use condoms, and they do so after my mother’s priest/mentor told her it was ok to do so in her situation. (a whole other story I will not get into right now)

I believe in the sanctity of the Catholic Church. I believe in all the sacraments and everything. But I also believe there is a little bit of room for human error in the Church. I believe the human error to be small and insignificant in light of the greater picture, but still present nonetheless in a few issues. Barrier contraception to be one them.

 

[Muze]

@Muze

First, with all respect, on a thread of over 200 posts, “clearly” is not an adverb that can be used to support one’s position - - I noticed quite a few of those in the most recent exchange with Mary gail.

Yes, let’s read the passage. Verse 10, immediately following the one you selected - - “and therefore the Lord slew him, because he did a detestable thing.” Because he intended a detestable thing, i.e., to deny a child to his brother’s house? No, because he did a detestable thing. It seems to me the detestable thing refers to the spilling of the seed in the immediately preceding verse, which is also the only action referenced in the verse.

The detestable thing was exactly that: NOT providing a child for his brother. That IS the larger issue. Indeed, it is the question that is repeatedly asked throughout Genesis: Will humanity continue?

After the fall, death appears imminent, and it is forestalled.

Cain kills Abel, and is banished? Can humanity continue?

God wants to wipe the world… Can humanity continue?

Abraham has no son, in spite of having the covenant? Can the covenant to save humanity continue?

Jacob and Esau fight, with Jacob stealing the blessing and Esau wanting ot kill him Can the covenant to save humanity continue?

Jacob has 12 sons. But famine threatens them? Can covenant to save humanity continue?

And this is just another in that vein. Tthis story’s question is this: Will Judah’s line continue? (Keep in mind who is of Judah’s line… So, there is a real question of whether the Messiah will come, too.)

Onan is commanded to father a child for his death brother, and while he has intercourse, he does not inseminate Tamar. So, when the bible says that Onan did a detestible thing, we have to look at it in the light of what Genesis is concerned with. And Genesis does not concern itself with spilling seed on the ground, but rather with whether the promise of God will continue through those He has chosen to bring it through, because of threats to that line.

So, once we get *out *of OUR cultural setting and the poor interpretation of this story and back into the cultural setting and the issues that Genesis raises, clearly the detestible thing is that Onan acted in such a way that he would not have to raise his brother’s child.

I’ll take a shot at your larger question, although I’m not sure I will reach an answer. Current understanding of proper use of NFP includes a just reason to use it. The whole point of taking the deceased brother’s wife as the younger brother’s wife is to produce an offspring. I think it would be fair to say from the evidence in the chapter that Onan and Tamar did not have just reasons to postpone pregnancy, right? So use of NFP without a just reason makes its use illicit

Would that justify the heavenly lightning strike? I do not think so, as the marital act wouild remain properly ordered. Given the later codification that failure to attempt the duty resulted in a punishment of public humilitation, I don’t think that Onan’s attempted use of NFP would have resulted in the consequence that disordering the act through coitus interruptus did.

So, Onan could have committed what is the worst sin possible in the context of Genesis, that being failing to continue the line of his brother, but because he did it in a way that was ordered, God would have accepted it?

Sorry, but Genesis clearly points us in the other direction.

 

[Debora123]

And I would just like to add something to the old Onan discussion, as I think it is widely misunderstood.

Onan was ordered to have unmarried sex with his dead brother’s wife so that she could get pregnant with a child to carry on her late husband’s name.

The ONLY reason she was having sex with him was so that she could have a baby. And the ONLY reason he was supposed to be having sex with her was to impregnate her for his late brother.

By having sex with her and then pulling out without her knowledge, he was practically cheating her and raping her, disrespecting his brother, and not being obedient to tradition.

This is NOT a case of a husband and wife who love each other but don’t have the means of having a child at the moment so they make the mutual decision to contracept until they are both in the position to bring a new life into the world.

 

[Muze]

And I would just like to add something to the old Onan discussion, as I think it is widely misunderstood.

Onan was ordered to have unmarried sex with his dead brother’s wife so that she could get pregnant with a child to carry on her late husband’s name.

The ONLY reason she was having sex with him was so that she could have a baby. And the ONLY reason he was supposed to be having sex with her was to impregnate her for his late brother.

By having sex with her and then pulling out without her knowledge, he was practically cheating her and raping her, disrespecting his brother, and not being obedient to tradition.

This is NOT a case of a husband and wife who love each other but don’t have the means of having a child at the moment so they make the mutual decision to contracept until they are both in the position to bring a new life into the world.

Actually he was taking Tamar as his wife for his brother, to raise children for his brother. Marriage in that day wasn’t about falling in love and marrying, but rather which man was charged with caring for you. Onan was given that charge until he died. After that, Tamar stayed in the house of Judah, effectively his wife supposedly until his youngest son grew up.

Which is why Tamar having sex with Judah wasn’t actually wrong. Tamar was a woman in Judah’s house, and actually Judah was treating her poorly by not giving her a man through which to continue Judah’s line though his firstborn.

 

[Debora123]

Onan is commanded to father a child for his death brother, and while he has intercourse, he does not inseminate Tamar. So, when the bible says that Onan did a detestible thing, we have to look at it in the light of what Genesis is concerned with. And Genesis does not concern itself with spilling seed on the ground, but rather with whether the promise of God will continue through those He has chosen to bring it through, because of threats to that line.

So, once we get *out *of OUR cultural setting and the poor interpretation of this story and back into the cultural setting and the issues that Genesis raises, clearly the detestible thing is that Onan acted in such a way that he would not have to raise his brother’s child.

YES.

I am glad someone else on here actually understands the Onan story and doesn’t try to twist out of context to back up the anti contraception rule. *Does Church doctrine even use this story to back up it’s claim about contraception being intrinsically evil??? *

 

[Good_Daughter]

Yes- but how many people have sex for the purpose of procreating children? We are not talking about being open to life, Augustine speaks of intent of the act.

How many people have sex for procreating children is irrelevent to our discussion. Because St. Augustine taught there was no sin in procreating children, he was teaching that the marital act isn’t inherently sinful.

I could actually agree, but that is not what we are teach people. We teach them sexuality is wonderful present of one human being to other, and giving is never selfish nor sinful.

Sex is meant to be a gift but it certainly can be misused.

Do you think it is possible to experience flesly gratification without selfishness and sin? Or we are too weak, and sin with each intercourse because of ourselves?

That’s a really good question. I think that our fallen nature makes it difficult to impossible to experience fleshly gratification without some degree of selfishness, even if it’s very little. I don’t worry about it though. God knows our nature and He makes up for what we lack.

To clergy, it was not.

I’m sure clergy knew the difference between narrative and allegory. If they chose to favour allegory to the exclusion of narrative in their writing, that was their prerogative.

Yup
fordham.edu/HALSALL/source/jerome-songofsongs.html

That’s a beautiful excerpt from St. Jerome on Song of Songs, thank you. In the first line, he disagrees with an opponent who thinks the book is only about marriage. His ‘virginity’ explanation that follows is looking at another level of allegory.

 

[Good_Daughter]

The Church told me NFP would help my marriage. The Church told me I would have an amazing and more satisfying sex life if I used NFP.

I’m no lover of NFP, but Debora, the Church has never said these things. NFP promoters say these things. The Church says couples with serious reason to avoid pregnancy may have sex during the wife’s infertile time, and that’s it. Please don’t blame the Church for errors it doesn’t commit.

 

[Mary_Gail_36]

Actually he was taking Tamar as his wife for his brother, to raise children for his brother. Marriage in that day wasn’t about falling in love and marrying, but rather which man was charged with caring for you. Onan was given that charge until he died. After that, Tamar stayed in the house of Judah, effectively his wife supposedly until his youngest son grew up.

Which is why Tamar having sex with Judah wasn’t actually wrong. Tamar was a woman in Judah’s house, and actually Judah was treating her poorly by not giving her a man through which to continue Judah’s line though his firstborn.

Then Judah said to his daughter-in-law Tamar, ‘Go home as a widow to your father, until my son Shelah grows up,’ for he was thinking, ‘He must not die like his brothers.’ So Tamar went home to her father.

12 A long time passed, and then Shua’s daughter, the wife of Judah, died. After Judah had been comforted he went up to Timnah for the shearing of his sheep, he and his friend Hirah the Adullamite.

13 When Tamar was told, ‘Look, your father-in-law is going up to Timnah for the shearing of his sheep,’

14 she changed out of her widow’s clothes, wrapped a veil around her to disguise herself, and sat down at the entrance to Enaim, which is on the way to Timnah; for she saw that, although Shelah was grown up, she had not been given to him as his wife.

15 Judah, seeing her, took her for a prostitute, since her face was veiled.

16 Going up to her on the road, he said, ‘Here, let me sleep with you.’ He did not know that she was his daughter-in-law. ‘What will you give me for sleeping with you?’ she asked.

17 ‘I will send you a kid from the flock,’ he said. ‘Agreed, if you give me a pledge until you send it,’ she replied.

18 ‘What pledge shall I give you?’ he asked. ‘Your seal and cord and the staff you are holding,’ she replied. He gave them to her and slept with her, and she conceived by him.

19 Then she got up and left him and, taking off her veil, resumed her widow’s weeds.

20 Judah sent the kid by his friend the Adullamite, to recover the pledge from the woman. But he did not find her.

21 He enquired from the men of the place, ‘Where is the prostitute who was by the roadside at Enaim?’ ‘There has been no prostitute there,’ they answered.

22 So returning to Judah he said, ‘I did not find her. What is more, the men of the place told me there had been no prostitute there.’

23 ‘Let her keep the things,’ Judah said, ‘or we shall become a laughing-stock. At least I sent her this kid, even though you did not find her.’

24 About three months later, Judah was told, ‘Your daughter-in-law has played the harlot; furthermore, she is pregnant, as a result of her misconduct.’ ‘Bring her out,’ Judah ordered, ‘and let her be burnt alive!’

25 But as she was being led off, she sent word to her father-in-law, ‘It was the owner of these who made me pregnant. Please verify’, she said, ‘whose seal and cord and staff these are.’

26 Judah recognised them and said, ‘She was right and I was wrong, since I did not give her to my son Shelah.’ He had no further intercourse with her.

Judah sent Tamar home to her father, to wait until Shelah the third son grew up. She tricked him into the sex. He never knew it was her until it was known she was pregnant…

 

[Mary_Gail_36]

And I would just like to add something to the old Onan discussion, as I think it is widely misunderstood.

Onan was ordered to have unmarried sex with his dead brother’s wife so that she could get pregnant with a child to carry on her late husband’s name.

The ONLY reason she was having sex with him was so that she could have a baby. And the ONLY reason he was supposed to be having sex with her was to impregnate her for his late brother.

By having sex with her and then pulling out without her knowledge, he was practically cheating her and raping her, disrespecting his brother, and not being obedient to tradition.

This is NOT a case of a husband and wife who love each other but don’t have the means of having a child at the moment so they make the mutual decision to contracept until they are both in the position to bring a new life into the world.

Onan and Tamar were married, he was annoyed that the children with her would not be considered his but his late brother. Onan could have had his own heirs if he wanted, his grandfather Jacob had 2 wives and two concubines.

As for the pink… you see it as exactly the same thing, abstaining during fertile times and having relations during fertile times, but using a condom?

 

[Warrior1979]

As there is never any injustice in God it is a non sequitur. Further (post #273), not everything that happened was written down.

I know that…I’m being sarcastic, as usual.

Since there is no injustice in God, there will be no unequal justice. It follows since justice will be equal, the same justice will be meted out for a similar act. If justice is not the same, then either the reason for the act isn’t the same, or the interpretation is wrong.