Take My Wife... Please!

Dan McClellan "It's no benefit to us if we kill our brother. Let's sell him." So Judah's already not looking good from a modern sensibilities point of view, but- He's a dick, is what he- To put it bluntly, yes. That is what Judah is. Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

Dan Beecher And I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan And you are listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion and combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How are things today, Dan?

Dan Beecher Good. Things are good. We're delving deep into some, I don't know, some stuff that some people might find disturbing this week.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher It's not easy stuff, and all of it is... Well, let's just say that if you have feminist sensibilities like I do- Which you should ... you're not going to like a lot of things you hear today.

Dan McClellan Yeah. As you're probably used to hearing on the podcast, we're going to get weird today.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Yeah. It's a little problematic.

Dan Beecher Yeah. The first half will be a little less problematic than the last. The last one, we're just going to give you a trigger warning right now. If you're triggered by mentions of sexual assault or whatever, please feel free to skip the last half. But do listen to the first half, even though it will still piss you off.

Dan McClellan Precisely.

Dan Beecher Yeah. So should we dive into this?

Dan McClellan I don't think we have any other choice at this point. We must do it.

Dan Beecher It is our job, after all. We're starting off in Genesis chapter 38, and what's weird about chapter 38 in Genesis is that chapter 37 starts off the Joseph being sold into slavery story. It's the whole Joseph story.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher Then chapter 38, nothing about that at all.

Dan McClellan Yep.

Dan Beecher It's about his brother, and then chapter 39, back to Joseph. So it's like this weird sort of interruption of the narrative.

Dan McClellan Kind of an A, B sitcom thing.

Dan Beecher Right. Yeah, exactly. Where it's like let's- This is the Kramer plot.

Dan McClellan Yeah. You've got to think about He-Man, where they went and- ... shot over to the other scene.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And we're dealing with Judah and Tamar.

Dan Beecher Now, this is Judah for whom the kingdom of Judah is eventually named. Is that right?

Dan McClellan That would be accurate.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher So pretty fancy dude.

Dan McClellan Yeah. He's big time.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And we've got Israel is Jacob, who is- Right ... Judah's father, and that's the northern kingdom of Israel, and then Judah is the southern kingdom of Judah. Judah being one of the 12 sons of Israel, and Judah was kind of doing some silly stuff in the previous chapter, 37. Comes up with this idea, "Hey, it's no benefit to us if we kill our brother. Let's sell him into slavery."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And so Judah's already not looking good from a modern sensibilities point of view, but- He's a dick, is what he- To put it bluntly, yes. That is what Judah is. But in chapter 38, we're going to see a little bit about his family, and we're going to bring into view a principle called levirate marriage, which we're going to talk a little bit more about once we get into it. But to start, Judah went down with his brothers and settled near a certain Adullamite whose name was Hirah. And so we're in Canaan, Judah marries Shuah, and they have a son named Er. And then they have another son named Onan, and then they have another son named Shelah.

Dan Beecher And- Now, a lot of people who talk about chapter 38 focus in on the Onan part of the story.

Dan McClellan Yes. You may have heard of Onan before. You probably haven't heard of Er, much less Shelah.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But so Judah picks out a wife, and in this time period, your marriages were closely related to what we think of as arranged marriages, where a father was like, "I like the cut of her jib. I'm going to go talk to her father, and I'm going to secure a contract so that either right now or when they come of age, my son will marry this guy's daughter." And so he pays a bride price, the father of the young woman profits from letting his daughter go, and that's usually the betrothal. So that's when they're engaged, and that engagement period could be pretty long, but they were contractually married, basically.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan They just had to consummate the marriage and then actually go off and become part of their own household. But we got a problem. Rather tersely, verse seven just says, "But Er was wicked in the sight of the Lord," and so Adonai killed him.

Dan Beecher Yeah. He got offed.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Which is rough.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher This happens more than once in this chapter- ... where God just zaps somebody.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher There you go.

Dan McClellan Yeah. This is something that when you're talking about body count in the Hebrew Bible, people will be like, "Oh, Satan only killed eight people. God killed millions." And this is one Yeah. And there's going to be another before the chapter ends. Spoiler alert. But at this point, we have to talk about something called levirate marriage, because Judah has brought this woman into his household. Now Er and Tamar would have had to have gone off and formed their own household, but above that, hierarchically speaking, in terms of the family, was Judah's household. And so Tamar kind of reverts to Judah's household. She does not have a child yet, and each male in the line, particularly the oldest, who stood to inherit the lion's share of the father's inheritance, wanted a child to carry on their line, carry on their share in the inheritance, carry on their name, all of that stuff. And if they didn't get that, then you have an arrangement called levirate marriage. And this is discussed in Deuteronomy 25- Yeah ... verses 5 through 10. And basically, the commandment is this. If a man marries a wife and then he dies before he's able to impregnate his wife, then the next of kin, usually the brother, but it could be somebody else in the family, the next of kin who is a male has a responsibility to either marry her or get someone else to marry her. And then whatever children come from that relationship are raised in the name of the deceased person. And then the- Which is a little weird.

Dan Beecher Yeah. But it's just words. It's just in the name of this person.

Dan McClellan I don't know.

Dan Beecher It seems like a weird thing to get too- Hung up on?

Dan McClellan ...

Dan Beecher hung up on.

Dan McClellan Well, the thing is, they also inherit everything that the older sibling who is dead stood to inherit. And so it is legally, financially, in every way, it is considered the offspring of the deceased. And this is something that we see in a variety of different places in the ancient world, and even in some societies still today. And levirate doesn't have anything to do with the tribe of Levi. It comes from a Latin word, levir, which means brother-in-law.

Dan Beecher Oh, okay.

Dan McClellan Yeah. So this is not unique to the Bible. And one of the ideas is that provides for the widow. She's now under the auspices, the protection, the roof of a paterfamilias, a male who runs a household.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And then she is going to have offspring, and they're going to be raised in the name of the deceased. And depending on exactly how it's expected to work, it's kind of a raw deal for the person who might marry this woman because some of their money's going to go to this child who's not going to be raised in their name. And the inheritance from the living brother's parents, father might skip over them to go to the son.

Dan Beecher Let's use the names of this story as our example- Okay ... because I think it's getting a little bit hard to follow.

Dan McClellan My bad.

Dan Beecher It might just be that I'm having trouble following it- Right.

Dan McClellan So- ...

Dan Beecher and everyone else is fine.

Dan McClellan But- So- ...

Dan Beecher Er has died.

Dan McClellan Er has died. Onan is the next in line, and Judah's like, "Look, you got to go marry Er's widow." He's like, "But Dad." He goes, "Shut up and do it." And so Onan goes in and marries Tamar. And then we get this peculiar story, which has been interpreted a variety of different ways, where it says, this is NRSVUE, "But since Onan knew that the offspring would not be his," because in name, legally, financially, in every way, it is Er's child.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan "He spilled his semen on the ground whenever he went into his brother's wife so that he would not give offspring to his brother." So he's going to take advantage of this opportunity to the extent he can without actually causing problems for himself financially.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And he commits coitus interruptus. And it seems to be, let me see if it's an iterative verb. I think it's just a PL.

Dan Beecher I don't know what that means.

Dan McClellan Nothing. Don't worry about it.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan It just says he spilled his seed onto the ground when he went in.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And in English, that could mean whenever he went in, all the times he went in. But in Hebrew, it's not exactly. It seems to be just one time.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And then the next verse says, "What he did was displeasing in the sight of the Lord." Who's watching, obviously.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And he put him to death also.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan So Er was just wicked. Onan was like, "I'm not impregnating my new wife."

Dan Beecher So his objection is, if Tamar has my child, then that's Er's child legally, and that child then inherits Er's inheritance. And if I don't impregnate her- Then I could have another wife, and that would be my child, and my child would get everything.

Dan McClellan That's the situation that would seem to be the most detrimental to Onan.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan That is a possibility in this circumstance. The text is not precisely clear. The text just says, "Since Onan knew that the offspring would not be his."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So he could be like, and there have been a lot of speculations about what exactly going on here. Onan might be like, "Ooh, brother, ooh. I don't want to raise a child with my deceased brother's wife, widow. That, ew."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Or it could be, this child is not going to be my child. It's my deceased brother's child. It's not in my name. I'm not going to care for this child. I don't want this child. Most likely, in my opinion, there's some kind of financial thing going on here that it has- Mm-hmm ... something to do with inheritance and stuff like that. But these are all just probabilities.

Dan Beecher Speculations.

Dan McClellan Yeah. We don't know for sure. And because levirate marriage operated differently from society to society, and from time to time within this culture, it could have operated differently from town to town.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan We can't really say for sure. But so- Well, no matter what, Onan made a bad decision because- Onan made a bad decision in the moment. He was not thinking.

Dan Beecher No. And he did something- Well, he was thinking. He definitely had thoughts. He had purpose and thought.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher But he didn't realize that the big guy was watching.

Dan McClellan Yeah. He did not consider the implications.

Dan Beecher And- And boom, he's gone.

Dan McClellan Yeah. So he got the final zap from the All Father. And then we have another problem. The problem then reverts back to Judah.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Who's like, "Damn it."

Dan Beecher So- But it's okay because he's got another one.

Dan McClellan He's got another son. However, as the story says, Judah says to Tamar, "Hey, stay in your father's house until my son Shelah grows up." And according to the text, Judah was just stalling.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Judah was like, "Every child of mine this woman touches- "... we find him dead with a hole in his chest," kind of Predator style.

Dan Beecher And- And she's saying, "God done it. It's not me."

Dan McClellan Yeah. And so Tamar went to live in her father's house. So basically, Tamar's like, "Okay, I'm not a part of Judah's household anymore. I'm going back to live with my family," which has not got to be a great prospect. She's got no prospects because- Right ... now that she has been with two other men, she's been married to two other men, she's tainted goods in the eyes of decent Israelite society, according to- Mm ... the standards and practices of that time period.

Dan Beecher So it seems like her best bet is the youngest son- Yeah ...

Dan McClellan is Shelah.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But she's been- And Judah's like, "Let's let the corpse quit sizzling before we give you my youngest son."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And then Judah's wife dies, and when Judah's time of mourning is over, he basically heads off to work. He went up to Timnah to his sheepshearers, he and his friend Hirah the Adullamite. And Tamar gets wind of this. There's got to be a pretty robust gossip network- ... going on here. So she throws off her widow's garments, and it says she put on a veil, wrapped herself up, and sat down at the entrance to Enim, which is on the road to Timnah. And so the veil, and we're going to see something a little peculiar here, and Timnah, I'm pretty sure there's a little valley that goes down to the Shephelah toward the sea. And so Beth Shemesh is a little up the valley, uphill a little bit. Timnah is, there's stories from the Judges, Samson associated with Timnah.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan But she basically dresses up as some manner of sex worker.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan It says she put on a veil, wrapped herself up, and then in 38:15 says, "When Judah saw her, he thought her to be a prostitute, for she had covered her face."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Now, face coverings were not unusual. It was not like that's the uniform of a sex worker as far as we can tell, but maybe something having to do with maybe the thickness of the veil, the fabric of the veil, the color of the veil.

Dan Beecher Maybe it just said prostitute across the front of it.

Dan McClellan Yeah. It could've who knows what was on it. Something keyed Judah to this. And this is something that I bring up in the chapter of the book that I have coming out soon, on a chapter about whether women were told to cover up in the Bible.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan Because a lot of people will point to passages that talk about, oh, someone was dressed as a prostitute. And today, when you hear a father saying, "Don't go out like that. You're dressed like a prostitute," the idea is you're dressed in revealing clothing.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan As far as we can tell from this and from a couple passages in Proverbs, it sounds like, "Don't go out like that, you're dressed like a prostitute," means you're wearing a specific kind of veil.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Or you're wearing specific jewelry or something like that.

Dan Beecher You're even more covered up.

Dan McClellan Yeah. You've got more. Take some of those layers off, young lady.

Dan Beecher You look like a... Yes, indeed.

Dan McClellan So, great editing on the fly there.

Dan Beecher Thank you. Yeah, my brain was going to places that we don't, this is a family show. Not really, because the subject matter sure ain't.

Dan McClellan But so she sits down, and she's going to intercept Judah, and she sees that Shelah. She sees Shelah with Judah going off to the sheepshearers, and he's grown up.

Dan Beecher He's plenty old.

Dan McClellan And she's like, "Huh, he hasn't given him to me yet, so it sounds like this is just not in the post." And it says, "When Judah saw her, he thought her to be a prostitute." She'd covered her face. He went over to her at the roadside and said, "Come, let me come into you." And this means precisely what it sounds like. This is a euphemism, but a pretty descriptive euphemism.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And she's like, "So we've got to talk price first."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And he's like, "Ooh, I left my wallet back at the sheepshearers. How about..." And he's basically giving her collateral. This is not payment, this is collateral. Says, "I will send you a kid from the flock." So that's the payment, and she says- Yeah ... "Only if you give me a pledge until you send it." And he says, "What collateral do you want?" She says, "Your signet," so like a seal, a ring that marks something with his identity, "and your cord, and the staff that is in your hand." So pretty steep collateral if you ask me.

Dan Beecher Is a cord basically a belt? Is that what we're talking about here?

Dan McClellan Or? Let me look at the Hebrew here. What we've got, patil. This is not very common. Something that's tied on.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Fine fiber. Yeah, this could be any one of a number of different things.

Dan Beecher So yeah.

Dan McClellan Some kind of belt or- Give me a ring.

Dan Beecher I'll take your stick and that piece of string, whatever that's doing.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Give me your Jordans, and I like the look of that belt.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan So yeah. This is basically Judah is like, "It's been a long day. Oh, look, a sex worker. I could use some relief." And he provides this collateral. So he's like, "Sure.

Dan Beecher Take it."

Dan McClellan And she conceives- Right ... because of his patronization, and she got up and went away, and when she got home, took off the sex worker garments and put back on the widow garments. And then when Judah was like, "Okay. Hey, I visited this sex worker. I told her I would give her one of our goats. So I'm going to take that goat right there." And he goes back, and he can't find her, and he asks the townspeople- Well, he sends his buddy back, I believe.

Dan Beecher Oh, yeah.

Dan McClellan By his friend, the Adullamite. He asks the townspeople, "Where's the prostitute who was at Anaim by the wayside?" But they said, "Ain't no prostitute here."

Dan Beecher Yeah. "We've never had a prostitute. Are you kidding me?"

Dan McClellan Have you ever seen Amazon Women on the Moon?

Dan Beecher Oh, maybe.

Dan McClellan There's a great skit with Arsenio Hall where he gets home from work in his apartment, and the phone rings, and he's like, "Hello?" He's like, "Oh, no, there's nobody by Sheila here." And he's having just a progressively worse day that ends up with him falling out of his window and dying. But the phone rings in the middle of all of this calamity, and every time he's like, "Ain't no Sheila here, man."

Dan Beecher So yeah.

Dan McClellan No prostitute has been here, so he was like, "Huh," and goes back to Judah, says, "I can't find her. I guess you get to keep the kid."

Dan Beecher Yeah. And he's like- But she's got your ring and stuff.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And verse 23 says, "Let her keep the things as her own. Otherwise, we will be laughed at. You see, I sent this kid, and you could not find her." He's like, "I don't want to make a big deal out of this."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan "I don't-" Okay.

Dan Beecher Let her have it. It's fine.

Dan McClellan Don't want to post on Facebook, "Hey, I patronized this sex worker the other day."

Dan Beecher She's on neighbor.com. "Does anyone know where the woman with the veil is? I owe her a goat."

Dan McClellan Yeah. And then three months later, Judah's told, "Hey, man, your daughter-in-law, Tamar, has prostituted herself. Moreover, she is pregnant as a result of prostitution." And Judah immediately is like, "Bring her out. Let her be burned."

Dan Beecher Yeah. Which is rough.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Considering the fact that even if he doesn't know who she is, which he doesn't, you participated in one half of just such an arrangement. Why are you getting all burn-y about everything?

Dan McClellan So yeah, there's some pretty rank hypocrisy here- Yeah ... when he is basically treating this like a stop off at the bar to have a beer before going home. And then he's like, "What? You've been selling beer? We're going to have to execute you."

Dan Beecher It does feel like, let me ask you this. In the world of the levirate marriage, since that's sort of part of what we've been talking about, if it weren't his child, if she had just prostituted herself and conceived, would that child then be considered hers child?

Dan McClellan No.

Dan Beecher No.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher No.

Dan McClellan Yeah. So levirate marriage is not just first come, first served. It is supposed to be within the kinship line. So this is actually what we have with the story of Ruth and Boaz. Have we ever talked about Ruth?

Dan Beecher We should do- No, we need to do a Ruth. Yeah, we need to do a Ruth. We need to do a Ruth.

Dan McClellan Yeah. So anyway, Boaz is not the closest of kin to Ruth's deceased husband, and we have this scene where he goes to the closest of kin, and he's like, "Me?" And the closest of kin goes, "No, no, no." And so then they've got to have this ritual where he takes off his sandal and gives it to him. But because Boaz is in the kinship line, that's what makes him eligible- Okay ... to actually fulfill- the Leveret marriage, because otherwise it's just another marriage.

Dan Beecher I guess that comports with the theme that we have oft talked about on this, which is that the woman is kind of meaningless in this other than just sort of as a vessel and a piece of property.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher Her contribution is not anything.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher So, it's about the masculine line, the men in this familial sort of line.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And so- Her personhood is basically established upon her ability to facilitate the procreation of her husband.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And so yeah, her agency and her will is virtually null, but as this story shows, her agency and her will is active. It may not be- Yeah ... very respected, but she's actually going to exploit this rather patriarchal system- Right ... of expectations and rules and everything to protect herself, and she's going to be recognized as the more righteous one for that. So basically, they bring her in, say, "Hey, we've got to burn you." And, they bring her before Judah, and she says, "Hey, check these things out. It was the owner of these things who impregnated me." And here's what the NRSVUE at the end of verse 25 says, "And she said, 'Take note, please, whose these are, the signet and the cord and the staff.'"

Dan Beecher "Do note, if you would."

Dan McClellan Yeah. "Point of order. Point of order."

Dan Beecher Yeah. It does take a lot of self-containment to be facing burning death and go, "Could you please take note of the following?"

Dan McClellan And, what is the... Okay, so recognize. So it's the imperative with the na on the end, which is kind of a please, thank you thing. Hakerena, which is, "Please recognize to whom these things belong."

Dan Beecher And- "Your Honor, I present Exhibit A."

Dan McClellan "May I approach?" And Judah acknowledged them or recognized them, the same verb that Tamar says, and says, "She is more right than I, since I did not give her to my son Shelah, and he did not lie with her again." Odd note at the end of the verse, saying Judah decided not to go it again.

Dan Beecher But- Yeah ...

Dan McClellan but yeah, Judah immediately recognizes, and this is a literary creation.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan They're telling this story the way that the story needs to go to advance the narrative. But if we imagined it was real, I can just see Judah getting his matches out and being like, "What are you doing with my signet ring and my... Oh, crap."

Dan Beecher "Oh.

Dan McClellan Ew."

Dan Beecher He looks over at his buddy and is like- It's like- ... "Can I get away... No, I can't get away with this. Dang it."

Dan McClellan "Well, I guess we found her."

Dan Beecher Yeah. And, but- "I owe you a goat."

Dan McClellan That's how the scene, if this were a sitcom, and we were about to do the He-Man's z-z-z-zip back to- Yeah.

Dan Beecher Exactly ...

Dan McClellan to Egypt, that's how the scene would've ended. "So you still need that goat, huh?" And so he immediately realizes why she has done what she has done. She is trying to secure offspring that are part of this kinship line, and she's like, "I will go. I don't need the apples falling to the ground. I'm going to go straight to the tree."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And that's valid, I guess.

Dan Beecher And- It does seem to be, because everything works out fine.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher In the story, as you say, she is hailed as the righteous one.

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher He acknowledges his own problematic behavior in this. None of his sin, it seems to me, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, is about going to a prostitute. That is never decried in this.

Dan McClellan There's nothing in the story that suggests there's anything wrong with that. There's something wrong with a woman being a prostitute, according to part of their family. "No twice-married and widowed- Right ... daughter of mine- No ... is going to be engaged in sex work under my roof." But even though- Yeah ... she's not under his roof anymore.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But yeah. And this raises a point that a lot of people don't realize when they talk about adultery. A man was not committing adultery if he was married and had sex with an unmarried woman.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan That's not adultery in the Hebrew Bible- Yeah ... because he could be married to as many women as he wanted, and in that time period, there were a variety of different ways to stake a marriage claim, and one of them was to have sex with a woman.

Dan Beecher And- Yeah, we're going to get to that in a little minute.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Let's wrap this business up, and then we'll get into some real nitty-gritty on that front.

Dan McClellan Right. So Judah's like, "Ah, you got me. You got me. I didn't give you my youngest son because I thought somehow, it was so I married an ax murderer scenario. I thought maybe you were Mrs. X and were going to take Shelah from me as well." And one can only imagine what her response must've been at that time.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Relief probably, that she was not going to be burned. Probably a little pride in sticking it to Judah.

Dan Beecher Yeah. I mean, he...

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher No. More jokes that I just can't do. All right. But here's the question that I have.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher I don't even know if we know the ins and outs of... First of all, this is Genesis, which means that maybe the Deuteronomistic, is that the word?

Dan McClellan Deut- That is a word.

Dan Beecher The deuteronomist would be whoever was responsible for the Deuteronomistic- But whatever the laws are that govern all of this, because the laws that you pointed out are in Deuteronomy.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher Whatever the laws are that govern this, I don't know how this works, but my curiosity is, did Tamar, by the end of this, give birth to, oh, and it's twins, but- Yeah ... are the twins that she gave birth to Judah's youngest sons, or are they Er's oldest sons? So- Legally speaking ...

Dan McClellan there's not a marriage there. Yeah, this I think is an interesting question, because, the act of patronization could be considered the act of marriage. So, legally they would've been considered Er's children, because she's basically trying to fulfill the levirate expectation where the other two have failed. But I'd be curious how people who put together the lineages would actually list that.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan In fact, I'm just going to look it up right now.

Dan Beecher How do they- The question makes sense, right? I, like- Mm-hmm.

Dan McClellan Oh, yeah. It makes sense.

Dan Beecher Because she could then be his wife, Judah's wife. But if Onan's kid was going to be then considered legally Er's kid- Mm-hmm ...

Dan McClellan yeah, who knows? Yeah, that's- So, if we look in the genealogy in Matthew 1, it actually lists Perez and Zerah as Judah's children.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Interesting.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan So, again, it's a situation where levirate marriage works differently in different circumstances, different societies, and so who knows exactly how it was understood. It could have changed because obviously the genealogy in Matthew is not a perfect representation of the genealogies as they were understood 500 years earlier. They're negotiating with it just like everyone else is.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But, yeah, that is an interesting question because according to the law of levirate marriage, and that's why Onan didn't want to do it, because it wouldn't have been considered his child. It would've been considered his deceased brother's child.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Hmm.

Dan Beecher So, if they had been Shelah's kids, then they would've been Er's kids. But since they were dad's kids, then they're dad's kids, and they don't get the firstborn's share. They get the lastborn's share.

Dan McClellan Probably.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan That is an interesting consideration anyway. Now, again, this is all literary fiction, so- Okay, fine.

Dan Beecher I'm just trying to explore the rules here.

Dan McClellan The implications.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And they're more like guidelines than rules.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Sure. This is something that I always point out when I'm teaching Biblical Hebrew. By the way, going to be teaching Biblical Hebrew starting August 5th. So, anybody out there who wants to learn some of this. The language isn't built on a foundation of rules. Language just does what language is going to do, and then we turn around and look back at it and try to identify patterns.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And then we say, "These are the rules," when really it's like, "These are the tendencies."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And all tendencies have exceptions. But yeah, that's the story of Judah and Er and Onan and Tamar and not Shelah.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And the story of levirate marriage, which- Yeah ... this and Ruth are the two stories where levirate marriage bubbles to the surface within the Hebrew Bible, and- Would levirate marriage have covered kind of everybody?

Dan Beecher Would that be a standard thing, or did it apply only in certain circumstances, or only if invoked by the widow? Or the widow, as if she had a choice in the matter. By the family or whatever.

Dan McClellan That's another unknown. We see what's in the text, and according to the text, it sounds like this is the law, this is what- Yeah ... is expected. But we already know that Deuteronomy is a pretty ambitious set of laws that probably wasn't ever enforced. And so each tribe probably had its own way of making it work, and it's also probably something that often flew under the radar. You probably had situations where somebody died and the dad and the daughter-in-law were just like, "Eh, let's just- Right ... let's not worry about this."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And nobody would've gotten upset. The curtain twitchers across the street might have tried to raise some complaints, but yeah.

Dan Beecher Who knows? Well, it almost seems like just reading the text, it almost seems like Judah is just making this decision. He could have made a different decision, but instead- Yeah ... he decided, "You know what, Onan? Get in there. We're going to keep pursuing this."

Dan McClellan Yeah. And this raises another observation, that this period seems to be more about just the patriarchy- Running the show.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan As the paterfamilias, as the supreme authority within that household, which included the sons, the daughters, the servants, the servants' sons and daughters, anybody who resided within there, he reigned supreme. And so he probably could have done what he wanted. And depending on how early we understand levirate marriage to have been operative among these tribes, maybe it wasn't even a thing. Maybe if it was a thing, the elders were kind of like, "Hey, you got that option if you want." We don't know for sure. But Deuteronomy 25 is probably later than this story.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan But yeah.

Dan Beecher All right. Well, there you go. There's the story of that. We may return to Genesis 38 at some point if we ever want to discuss masturbation, because- ... Onanism becomes a very important part of that discussion. But we'll see.

Dan McClellan Who knows?

Dan Beecher In the meantime, let us move on to a little chapter and verse only. This is laws of the land. You know what I mean? We're going to get into some legalistic stuff. We're going back to Deuteronomy.

Dan McClellan This is 22.

Dan Beecher Mm-hmm. And we're going to discuss some laws, and yeah, this is where things start to get a little sketchy. So why don't you guide us through what we're looking at here?

Dan McClellan Okay. If you want an interesting law, you can check out earlier in the chapter verses 13 through 21. We're going to skip that for now. We're going to start in verse 22, and this is basically some laws about adultery and sexual assault, and there's a little bit of overlap between these two things. And something that we've talked about before is that you don't really have a clear concept of the agency and the will of women in this time period. In fact, they were not considered to be the owners of their own sexuality and their sexual organs and stuff. That was property of their husband or their father anticipating getting paid to sell them to a husband.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So, they don't really have much agency or control over their own sexuality, and so we're going to see some lines blurring together here. But starting in verse 22, we have a set of laws, and this is NRSVUE. I'm going to dip into the Hebrew a little bit to talk about what's going on in some of these passages. "If a man is discovered lying with the wife of another man, both of them shall die, the man who lay with the woman as well as the woman. So you shall purge the evil from Israel." Now, this is talking about adultery, and we just talked about how if a married man is lying with a woman who's not married, that's not adultery at all. We're going to get to what's going on there. But this is just saying, "Yeah, they both must die. So shall you purge the evil from Israel." And the idea here seems to be similar to what we have going on in the holiness legislation, which is this idea that this act generates a kind of metaphysical contaminant that gets out onto the actual land and pollutes the land- Hmm ...

Dan Beecher and the land can only stand so much of it before it will vomit you out.

Dan McClellan Interesting. And that's the warning we get in Leviticus 18 and Leviticus 20. And so the punishment, it says, "This punishment is how you purge the evil from Israel, from the land."

Dan Beecher Yeah. It keeps saying that.

Dan McClellan It says that- Mm-hmm ... sort of after each of these things.

Dan Beecher Yeah. It feels like it knows that this is harsh, that killing these people is harsh, and so it's sort of justifying it- Yeah ... in that way. It is interesting that women are not considered to be the... Obviously, in this case, where a man is lying with the wife of another man, it's clear what the man's sin is. It's a violation of the other man's property- Right ...

Dan McClellan essentially.

Dan Beecher Mm-hmm. It's unclear what the woman's sin is. In this case, he could be doing it entirely against her will, but she's still going to be killed for this act.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And it just does not address whether or not this was consensual.

Dan Beecher It is- Yeah. It doesn't seem to be relevant to the question.

Dan McClellan No.

Dan Beecher And she, yeah.

Dan McClellan Huh.

Dan Beecher This has bred some very, very bad... I just this week saw a TikTok of a woman talking about when she was young, and having been told in church, sort of among the young women of her church, she had been told that they had all been told that if they were sexually assaulted, better that they should fight to the death- Right ... than come home sullied.

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher And I think that is just about as toxic a theology as you could possibly concoct. It's- And it seems like it's rooted in verses like this.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And it's rooted in this longstanding patriarchal idea that the value of a woman is found in her purity- Yeah ... and which is really the objectification of... This is so rooted in the objectification of women, because nothing changes about a woman physically- No ... once she's had sex. Virginity is an abstract. It is a conceptual category that we have created. It is a social construct. It means nothing- Right ...

Dan Beecher biologically.

Dan McClellan ... except that there has been a penis in this vagina. That is all that it means. And so to say that this somehow sullies a woman is to say that she is property Yeah and the property is no longer in pristine new condition. It is now used, and therefore it is less valuable. It is literally treating a woman as property. There's not really a legitimate way to conceptualize it other than to say that we want these organs to be fresh and new and have that new car smell, and any use of this means it's damaged goods. Means it's- Yeah ... used property.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And that's just awful. But the notion, and I understand what that rhetoric is trying to do. It's trying to emphasize how important this is, but when you try to escalate the importance by saying, "Oh, you should be willing to fight to the death before that," what it's saying is that that purity is more important than your life.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And so if someone has been sexually assaulted or even engages consensually in premarital sex, the message is, you don't deserve to live.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And there are people who have taken their own lives because that's the message they hear, irrespective of what the person who communicated that message thought they were communicating. That's what people hear, and that has resulted in people taking their own lives, and that is abominable.

Dan Beecher Yeah. Elizabeth Smart, the kidnap victim from here in Salt Lake City, speaks very eloquently about all of this.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Anyway, there's more bad laws coming up. Let's get- Yes ... to those.

Dan McClellan So there's a threefold division between verses 22 and 29. First, we're going to talk about a married woman, then we're going to talk about a betrothed woman, and then we're going to talk about an unmarried, unbetrothed woman who is obviously, she's gone through puberty.

Dan Beecher Yeah. Buckle up for that.

Dan McClellan Yeah. So verses 23 and 24, "If there is a young woman, a virgin, already engaged to be married, and a man meets her in town and lies with her, you shall bring both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death, the young woman, because she did not cry for help in the town, and the man, because he violated his neighbor's wife. So you shall purge the evil from your midst." And here, the fact that this is a property crime against a man is made explicit.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan The other man is put to death, not because he victimized a woman, but because he violated the property rights of another man.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And this is the part that people have been arguing about this for generations, but, "You shall stone the young woman to death because she did not cry for help in the town."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan There are a lot of assumptions that have to be made here. And the people who wrote this are making a bunch of assumptions. For instance, it seems to be saying if it happened, that means she did not cry out. It doesn't seem to allow for the possibility that she did cry out and nobody heard.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan She did cry out, and the neighbors were like, "Not my business."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan She did cry out, but because she was paralyzed with fear, maybe she could not cry loudly enough. Maybe he was choking her. Maybe he threatened her, and she was scared. There are any one of a number of reasons why this could have been non-consensual, and she could not have put a stop to it.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But what this law seems to be doing is it seems to be performing the ability to consider the agency of the woman by saying, "Well, let's offer two different scenarios. If it happens in a town, then she didn't cry out." This is not how actual jurisprudence on the ground plays out.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan This is just somebody abstractly kind of making up a scenario. Let's just say that if it happens in a town, that means she didn't stop it. That means she gets killed. And I don't think it's about her agency, whether she wanted it or not, or if it was consensual or not. I think it's just saying she didn't stop it. That's the fulcrum on which all of this pivots, is whether or not she stopped it. Because in the next verse, it says, "If the man meets the engaged woman in the open country, and the man seizes her and lies with her, then only the man who lay with her shall die. You shall do nothing to the young woman. The young woman has not committed an offense punishable by death, because this case is like that of someone who attacks and murders a neighbor, since he found her in the open country, the engaged woman..." Okay, now the NRSV says, "May have cried for help." And that is not what is in the Hebrew.

Dan Beecher Interesting.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Because the Hebrew just said, "And saqa," cried out, "Ha-na-ar-ah," the young woman. So the engaged woman cried out, but there was no one to rescue her. So the NRSVUE is doing some rehabilitating here of this text because- Yeah ... this is the opposite side of the coin. If it happened in the city, she didn't cry out.

Dan Beecher Why?

Dan McClellan Because it happened. Because we're assuming that if she was unwilling, then she would've cried out, and it would not have happened. He would not have- Right.

Dan Beecher All of the everyones would come running.

Dan McClellan Right. And they would arrive before he was able to actually do anything.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And so this is the other side of the coin. Oh, if it happened in the open field, she did cry out.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And so this is a performance of the ability to be compassionate and to consider the agency of the woman in an awful way, in a way that would not stand in any courtroom, ancient or modern. But it's saying, "Hey, let's show them that we can consider the agency of the woman." And then we get to the case of a woman who is not married or engaged. In verse 28 and 29, it says, "If a man meets a virgin who is not engaged and seizes her and lies with her, and they are discovered, the man who lay with her shall give 50 shekels of silver to the young woman's father and shall become his wife, because he violated her, and he shall not be permitted to divorce her as long as he lives." So, lots of stuff going on here, too.