Genesis 38:9

This verse comes from one of the Bible's most uncomfortable stories, tucked into Genesis — the first book of the Bible — inside the larger narrative of Jacob's family. A man named Judah, one of Jacob's twelve sons, had a son named Er who married a woman named Tamar. Er died childless. In the culture of that time and region, when a man died without an heir, it was the legal and moral duty of his next brother to marry the widow and father children who would legally carry the dead man's name and inherit his property. This practice, called levirate duty, was critically important because widows in that world had almost no financial security otherwise — their survival depended on having children to care for them. Judah told his second son, Onan, to fulfill this duty for Tamar. But Onan calculated that any children born would legally be counted as his dead brother's heirs, not his own — reducing his own inheritance. So he took the marital relationship while deliberately preventing pregnancy. He used Tamar, but refused to give her what she was legally and morally owed.

God, it is far easier to take than to give, and easier to perform duty than to truly mean it. Show me where I am using people — or even you — for what I want while withholding what I actually owe. Give me the honesty to see it and the courage to change. Amen.

Onan's name has been attached for centuries to debates about a very specific physical act — but the story itself is about something far more recognizable and far more common: taking what you want while refusing to give what you owe. Onan had access to all the intimacy of the marriage relationship. He simply had no intention of delivering the one thing that would secure Tamar's future. He performed the role without the responsibility. And Tamar — who had no power, no other options, and no way to refuse — paid the price for his selfishness. That pattern doesn't require an ancient Near Eastern context to recognize. We do versions of it constantly: present in a friendship but emotionally unavailable, collecting loyalty without offering it back, enjoying community while contributing nothing to sustain it, receiving grace without extending it. The question this story forces is genuinely uncomfortable: Where are you showing up for the benefits of a relationship while quietly withholding what someone actually needs from you? It's rarely dramatic. It usually looks ordinary. But it is always costly — and almost always costliest to the person with the least power to push back.