The Pulpit Commentary — Genesis — Section 499

HOMILETICS. Vers. 1-30.-The house of Judah: a family record of sin and sltame. I. THE WICKEDNESS or ER AND ONAN. 1. Early. On any hypothesis Er and Onan can have been little more than boys when they were man-ied, and yet they appear to have arrived at a remarkable precocity in sin. Nor was it simply that they had shed ~he i_nnocence and purity of youth, but they had also acquired a shameful J?roficiency m vwe. Young scholars are mostly apt learners, especially in the devil's school. 2. Unnatural. Though not described, the wickedness of Judah's first son had rela- tion to some perversion of the ordinance of marriage; that of his second is plainly stated to have been uncleanness and self-pollution. Neither against nature nor con- trary to grace are the endearments of the married state, but every act outside of the Divine permissions concerning woman is both. 3. Heinous. The act of Er is cha- racterised as "wicked in the sight of the Lord," while that of Onan is said to have displeased the Lord. Hence it may be reasonably inferred that the essential criminality in both cases was the same. They were both perversions of a natural ordinance. They both militated against the purity and development of the theo- cratic family. Both indicated a contemptuous unbelief in the promise of the covenant, and a sacrilegious disregard for the calling of Israel as the progenitor of tl,e promised seed. Hence both were deserving of Divine reprobation. 4. Dis- astrous. The tendency of all sin is ruinous, both for body, soul, and spirit. Whether as a natural result of indulgence in vice, or as a direct punitive visitation from God, Er and Onan were consigned to premature graves; and this, it should be noted by young persons of both sexes, is the almost inevitable consequence of indulgence in secret vice, and'in particular of the practice of which Onan was guilty. Yielded to, it debilitates the physical constitution by a wasting of the vital powers, it impairs the mental faculties, it corrupts the moral nature, it sears and petrifies the conscience, and finally, what might have been a fair specimen of noble and virtuous manhood or womanhood it covers up, a poor, wasted, shivering skeleton, beneath the clods of il,e ,·aUey, causing it to lie down among the sins of its youth. II. THE BIN OF 'l'AMAn. The conduct of Judah's daughter-in-law, the young widow of Er and Onan, though not without its extenuations, in having been partly pro\'oked by Judah's reluctance to marry her to Shelah, and partly inspired by a desire to take her place among the ancestresses of the promised seed, was yet in many respects reprehensible. 1. She discovered impatience. Although Judah did manifest a temporary unwillingness to give her Shelah for a husband, she might l,ave reasoned that, after losing two sons, it was not unnatural that he should hesi- tate about exposing a third to the same riRk of destruction. 2. She manifested un- l.,eliej. I£ Tamar did regard herself aa wronged, as most undoubtedly she w11s, instead of taking measures to right herself, she should have left her cause to God, who had already vindicated her against the wickedness of her youthful husbands, and who in his own time and way would doubtless have interposed to assert her P!erogative as a widow belonging to the family of Israel. 3. She practised decep- twn. Laying aside her widow's garments, and assuming tha attire of n harlot, she took her station at the gate of Enajim, 9n the way to Timnntl1, nnd pretended to bo CH. xxxvm. 1-30.J THE BOOK OF GENESIS. 445