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In the Biblical Book of Genesis, Onan (Hebrew: ××•Ö¹× Ö¸×Ÿ, Standard Onan Tiberian ʾװnÄn ; Strong) was the second son of Judah. Certain interpretations of the narrative concerning him have led to the use of the term onanism to refer to masturbation.
According to the text, after God had killed Onan's older brother Er, Judah asked Onan to have sex with Tamar, Er's former wife, so that the offspring could be declared Er's heir. The narrative implies that Onan didn't object to the sex itself, but performed coitus interruptus, spilling his seed upon the ground, so that there wouldn't be any offspring he couldn't claim as his own; the passage goes on to state that for this act, a displeased Yahweh killed him. The deaths of Onan and Er are among the few deaths that the Torah doesn't describe as being caused via an intermediary, such as plague or the Angel of Death.
According to biblical scholars, the description of Onan is an eponymous aetiological myth concerning fluctuations in the constituency of the tribe of Judah, with the death of Onan reflecting the dying out of a clan; Er and Onan are hence viewed as each being representative of a clan, with Onan possibly representing an Edomite clan named Onam, mentioned by an Edomite genealogy in Genesis.
The text emphasises the social and legal situation, with Judah explaining what Onan must do and why; the plain reading of the text is that Onan was killed because he refused to follow instructions. Scholars have argued that the secondary purpose of the Tamar narrative, of which the description of Onan is a part, was to either assert the institution of levirate marriage, or present an aetiological myth for its origin; Onan's role in the narrative is thus as the brother abusing his obligations by agreeing to sexual involvement with his dead brother's wife, but refusing to allow her to become pregnant as a result. Emerton regards the evidence for this as inconclusive, though classical rabbinical writers argued that this narrative describes the origin of levirate marriage.
Read more at Wikipedia.org
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