The Onan Incident

"And Judah said unto Onan, 'Go in unto thy brother's wife, and marry her, and raise up seed to thy brother.' 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." (Gen 38:8-10)

"spilled it"--to wickedly destroy or ruin, to decimate by killing, to act as a man of destruction: a waster or a prodigal, to behave corruptly by putridity, to lay waste and destroy

the thing "which he did"--a thing--labored or worked on, made, produced, or fabricated by labor, manufactured, produced, or created, especially (when used of living creatures) a thing produced from onesself, as in 'to make milk' or 'to make fruit' or 'to grow fat,' to execute or complete an intended action

"displeased"--from two Heb. words: 1) to be evil, from the idea of raging, being tumultuous, of an evil disposition, noxious, hurtful, to do ill, to act wickedly, to break in pieces or kill & 2) to come before the eyes of any one

wherefore--for which reason, for that very reason

"And the thing which he did displeased the Lord: wherefore [for that very reason] he slew him also."

God says Onan's physical act was _itself_ evil, noxious, and destructive--and that when that physical act came before God's eyes, it was for that very physical act that Onan was slain. According to every recorded generation of Christian scholars prior to 1900, this is plain from the grammar.

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