Genesis 38:10

Summary

The verse states that what Onan did was evil in the sight of Yehovah, and as a result Yehovah also put him to death. The Hebrew connects the divine judgment directly to the preceding action, using the same verb of death that appeared for Onan's brother in the previous verse.

Key words

• yera' ("it was evil", H7489A) — qal narrative verb, third person masculine; establishes the moral/evaluative reaction that opens the verse.
• 'einei ("eyes of", H5869H) — feminine dual noun in construct state, forming the idiom "in the eyes of," which introduces the perspective from which the action is judged.
• YHWH ("Yehovah", H3068G) — the proper name, identified here as the one whose "eyes" evaluate the deed.
• 'asah ("he had done", H6213A) — qal perfect, marking completed action prior to the evaluation; refers back to what Onan did.
• yamet ("he put to death", H4191) — hiphil narrative verb, causative form (literally "he caused to die"), indicating that Yehovah is the direct agent of death.
• gam ("also", H1571) — adverb signaling that this death parallels an earlier one (that of Er, Onan's brother) mentioned earlier in the chapter.

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative vav on yera' ("and it was evil"), followed by the prepositional phrase be'einei YHWH ("in the eyes of Yehovah"), an idiom that expresses evaluation from Yehovah's perspective rather than physical eyesight. The relative clause 'asher 'asah ("which he had done") uses the qal perfect to mark the deed as already completed at the point of evaluation, though the subject of 'asah is not stated by a proper noun in this segment and must be inferred as Onan from context.

The second clause is joined by another narrative vav on yamet, a hiphil form of the root H4191, meaning "to cause to die" — the causative stem marks Yehovah as the one who brings about the death, rather than merely being present when it occurs. The adverb gam ("also") together with the direct object marker 'oto ("him," H0853 + H9033) links this death to a previous one, indicating that Onan's death parallels an earlier death within the narrative (that of Er). The suffix on 'oto is the only place in the clause where "him" appears grammatically; no separate noun for "Onan" occurs in this verse's Hebrew text.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the second clause with ἐθανάτωσεν καὶ τοῦτον ("and killed this one too"), matching the Hebrew gam + suffix construction closely. The Vulgate diverges structurally by opening with Et idcirco percussit eum Dominus ("And therefore the Lord struck him"), using percussit ("struck") rather than a "death"-causing verb, and restructuring the sentence so that the reason clause (quod rem detestabilem faceret, "because he did a detestable thing") follows the divine action rather than preceding it as in the Hebrew.