God Flat-Out Murders Two People

If you’ve read the posts leading up to this one, you may have gleaned that the Bible contains some, shall we say, “not entirely appropriate,” material for teaching children life lessons or using as an example of how to live a full and wholesome life.  I can ultimately forgive that.  Even though the holy book of billions of people contains more murder, rape, incest and wholesale slaughter than Game of Thrones, it’s ultimately a vast and epic ancient narrative and, really, all the other cultures around at the same time had their own share of creepy, disturbing stories in their own religious texts.  There’s usually also some kind of reason why the stories are so crazy, whether it’s to explain relations between tribes, to build the character of the Mr. Hairy Thunderer, Old Testament God, or to give an origin story to something otherwise unexplainable.

And sometimes they’re just there to remind us that our ancestors, like us, got their kicks from some sick shit.  They have no redeeming quality whatsoever, other than maybe to mock us for having faith in a merciful, benevolent God.  What I'm saying is that sometimes God singles out individuals and then flat-out murders them.

You may already know about Joseph and his coat of many colours.  If not, don’t worry.  I have Andrew Lloyd Webber and Donny Osmond here to explain it to you:

 

They keep telling me homosexuality is frowned on in the Bible, yet here we are.

 

If someone put a gun to my head and ordered me to teach a Bible story to children, I would probably pick Joseph.  It’s the relatively harmless tale of a man whose brothers, jealous of his fabulous new rainbow coat, sell him into slavery in Egypt.  (Well, we can’t just not traumatize the kids at all.  It’s not the Bible if there’s not at least a little bit of horror.)  Luckily for Joseph, he was born with the poorly explained ability to interpret dreams like a psychic hotline, a talent which eventually wins him a job as Pharaoh’s right-hand man.  Joseph’s brothers, in the meantime, are stricken with famine and must travel to Egypt to beg for food from Pharaoh.  This puts them in Joseph’s court, but they don’t recognize him for all the guyliner and fancy golden duds.  Joseph tricks them, making them think he’s going to punish one of the brothers for a crime he didn’t commit, before revealing himself as their long-lost sibling.  The brothers, who regret having sold Joseph to slavers in the first place, are thrilled to see him alive and well.  Everybody has a good laugh, we learn a lesson about the importance of forgiveness, hugs all around, and nobody fucking dies or is raped or mangled or gets their freaky incest on for once.

Well, yet anyway.

 

It’s a decent story with a decent lesson and minimal depravity, which must be exactly why whatever Romans put the original Bible together decided to leave this story smack in the middle of it.  It’s as if they were bitter they couldn’t have gladiators and bisexual orgies anymore (being Christian and all), so they had to ruin the only normal story they had with an intermission of God personally murdering the shit out of people.

Yes, really.  Here we go:

Judah is a regular ancient Hebrew dude with two sons: Er and Onan.  He just wants what’s best for his sons and so, like a good Hebrew dad, he goes out and finds his eldest son a pretty wife.  Her name is Tamar.  She and Er live a long and prosperous life together, until one day tragedy strikes.

Oh, wait.  No, I got that wrong.

“And Judah took a wife for Er his firstborn, whose name was Tamar.  And Er, Judah’s firstborn, was wicked in the sight of the LORD, and the LORD slew him.” – Genesis 38:6-7

Nope.  They get married and then, literally in the next line, God just goes ahead and “slays” Er for no reason other than he is “wicked.”  Personally comes down from Heaven and goes Buffy on his ass.  Were they happy until then?  Dunno.  Was Tamar sad that her husband had been smitten?  Dunno.  That is literally the beginning of the chapter.  The only thing we hear about Er before he gets his butt murdered is that he was born.  That’s it.  We never learn what the crime was that made Er so wicked in the first place.  It could have been trimming his sideburns.  Hopefully it was something inexcusably evil for God to have gotten his holy butt down here in person.  Maybe he tried to ass-rape an angel like the people of Sodom?  That’s what I’m going to go with.  Just to make myself feel better about God personally “slaying” him.

“Slaying” him.

Sweet Zombie Jesus Christ, people – God actually slew this poor guy.  That’s what you do when you really mean murdery business.  You slay the dragon that’s been eating some poor village.  According to newspapers, psycho killers slay their victims.  It brings to mind methodical, impersonal and brutal murder.  God did that.  Not to an evil nation or a rogue angel or something – to some random guy whose transgression we can’t even begin to guess at because he’s only around for one line.

It has to be angel rape.  Nothing else will make me feel better.

Though this does make me wonder - how exactly does God personally slay a wicked person?  However he does it, it's probably pretentious and obscenely violent.

Hmmm, violent and pretentious enough, but too impersonal.

Pretentious and personal, but not wantonly violent enough ...

Certainly violent and personal, but not really pretentious ...

Aha!

Anyway, with Er murdered by God via flying-300-leap of death, Judah has a widowed daughter-in-law on his hands.  Naturally, he does the honorable thing and orders his younger son, Onan, to marry her and have babies in his brother’s name.  Because, you know, preserving the name of someone God personally eradicated sounds like a swell idea.  What could go wrong?

Onan not wanting to go through with it, for starters.  He doesn’t want to have children in Er’s name.  In his mind, if he’s going to be saddled with a bunch of screaming poop-machines, they’re going to damn well be his own.  Instead of passing up on the sex though, Onan just pulled out and shot his load onto the ground (apparently they like it outside, those dirty ancient Hebrews).  Big deal, right?  There were no condoms in 2,000 BCE anyway.

Unfortunately, for God this is a massive deal.  Apparently Onan had never seen the opening of Monty Python’s Meaning of Life, because he never learned that every sperm is sacred.  God flips his ever-loving Holy Shit and ...

You know, maybe he just guns you down in a drive-by smiting.

 Slain.

In case you’re not keeping track, that is two people that God has personally murdered in the space of one Bible chapter.  If you don’t believe me, here’s the passage:

“And 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. And the thing which he did displeased the LORD: wherefore he slew him also.” – Genesis 38:9-10.

This time there’s no ambiguity.  God murders Onan because he ejaculates outside of his wife to keep from having to raise his brother’s kids.  That’s insane.  It’s not even like he does it because he wants to prevent her getting pregnant altogether.  He just doesn’t want to be responsible for raising Er’s (who, in case you've forgotten, was slain by God) babies.  Can you blame the poor guy?  Do you know any man who would be completely okay with marrying his brother’s widow, having children in his name, and then raising them?  Now imagine that that brother was personally murdered by God for something he did.  Even if you were a total heathen who couldn’t care less about what God thinks, seeing your brother actually smote by the Heavenly Dick would probably turn you off trying to carry on his family name.

Somehow I find this story more disturbing than the ones where God bowls over 20,000 people or something.  Of course, that’s awful and completely against the peaceful, loving Cosmic Muffin God that churches want you to believe in, but it is a godly thing to do.  Gods kill people en masse when they’re displeased - such is the way gods work.  But when they start picking out individual people and just murdering the fuck out of them because they didn’t follow some arbitrary rule that was never actually laid down anyway?  That’s fucked up.

What’s also fucked up is the fact that people actually use this story as an excuse for why masturbation and contraception are sins.  Yes, because God slew some dude in Genesis for, as you may notice, not just using contraception but doing so because he didn’t want his brother’s children, condoms are evil and AIDS is now ravaging the mostly Catholic continent of Africa.  Way to go, God.  You couldn’t have given the guy a break so that stupid rule couldn’t be plucked out of the Bible and used to perpetuate an endless cycle of horrific death.  Oh, no.  You and your all-seeing, all-knowing jerkwad self just had to go ahead and do it anyway.  Jerk.

I’m starting to not like you very much, God.

Anyway, before this gets really dark, you may be wondering what happened to Tamar.  I'm glad you asked, hypothetical reader, because it's fucked up too!  In a nutshell, she didn’t want to wait for Er and Onan’s third, younger brother to grow up and give her babies (because remember, for women in the Bible it’s always about babies).  So, dressing like a prostitute, Tamar propositions none other than Judah, her father-in-law.

Presumably like this, but with a camel instead of a car.

 

Tamar veils herself, so Judah doesn’t realize the creepy quasi-incest they’re about to commit (which, by the way, is the second time a woman commits incest with her father-figure for babies).  They get their bone on without Tamar ever revealing her face, and Tamar finally makes herself a baby for Er.  When Judah finds out that – gasp! – Tamar is pregnant, he considers having her burned alive (of course he does – this is the Bible) but Tamar manages to prove that Judah is the father and he calls it off.  Tamar gives birth to twins, one of whose line eventually produces David, and then Jesus.

Which I guess is the weak excuse the makers of the first Bible used when not cutting this whole fucked up mess right out in the first place.