ellauri171.html on line 1050: Although the readers know that God has killed two of Judah’s sons, Judah does not. This is known as dramatic irony. He suspects that Tamar is a “lethal woman,” a woman whose sexual partners are all doomed to die. So, Judah is afraid to give Tamar to his youngest son, Shelah, the inventor of Shelah quantifiers. So doing, Judah wrongs Tamar. According to Near Eastern custom, known from Middle Assyrian laws, if a man has no son over ten years old, he could perform the Levirate marriage (yibbum) obligation himself; if he does not, the woman is declared a “widow,” free to marry again. Judah, who is perhaps afraid of Tamar’s lethal character, could have set her free. But he does not—he sends her to live as “a widow” in her father’s house. Unlike other widows, she cannot remarry and must stay chaste on pain of death. She is in limbo.
xxx/ellauri086.html on line 81: The Consummation of the Levirate
xxx/ellauri086.html on line 83: ONAN, as almost everybody knows, was killed by God for the heinous crime of "spilling his seed upon the ground". This, throughout history, has associated him with masturbation, beginning with the writings of Clement of Alexandria. And I agree, that when DFW mentions O.N.A.N., that connotation is implied. But that's not why God was mad at Onan. If you go read the whole sordid story in Genesis 38: when God killed Onan's brother, for reasons which are a bit obscure, leaving his widow childless, it was the custom that Onan was required to marry her and father a child upon her. This child would legally be his brother's. This was known as Levirate marriage. Onan didn't want any children who weren't legally his, so Onan "went in" to his brother's wife but pulled out early and "spilled his seed on the ground". So Onan's real sin was refusing to Consumate his Levirate Marriage. Now, once God whacked Onan, his widow had to wait for his remaining brother to grow up. But she got tired of waiting and put on a veil(!!!!) and tricked Onan's father into having sex with her. So a painting of the "Consummation of the Levirates" might be Onan's father banging his sons' wife....
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