Posted by Mary [Joshua] on April 07, 1999 at 18:10:46 {HTWDI6pmYgSpdplHcja6Ihs.EqJaAw}:
I found something rather strange in last nights' bible reading. In Genesis 38: 9&10, it reads: "But O'nan knew that the offspring would not become his; and it occurred that when he did have relations with his brother's wife he wasted his semen on the earth so as not to give offspring to his brother. Now what he did was bad in the eyes of jehovah; hence he put him also to death."
Now if you skip ahead a few thousand years to the time of John the Baptist, we know that Herod's daughter, at the urging of her mother, requested the head of John the Baptist on a platter. It was the mother's hatred of John that prompted such a request. And why did she hate him so much? Because John had condemned her marriage to Herod as something dispicable, because she originally had been married to Herod's brother. [I don't know if the full account is in the bible, but in the "History of the Jews" by Flavius Josephus, it gives more details].
So what I don't understand, is why marrying your brothers wife was customary and indeed required of someone, according to Hebrews laws 4,000 years ago, and yet it was something so disgusting at the time of John the Baptist, that he openly condemned two persons, (who weren't even Jews) for doing the same thing!
Does anyone have an explanation for this?