The Bible describes three cases of “sperm stealing,” incidents in which women seduce a man and make him an unwitting sperm donor. And all three instances involve an ancestor of David, ancient Israel’s great hero-king.
Sperm stealing is a fact of human life as old as the most ancient civilizations and as contemporary as modern single women who decide that their marital status should not bar them from becoming mothers. We have examples of sperm stealing from the literature of ancient Sumer and ancient Greece.1 I suspect that if the reader does not personally know of a woman who has seduced a man into unknowingly fathering a child, it would not take many inquiries to learn of one who did.
How did the biblical authors regard sperm stealing? Are the incidents narrated with empathy and approval, even implicit approval, or are they presented as negative and repugnant? To answer these questions, we will examine the three biblical cases of sperm stealing, two of which are clear-cut, one of which is implied. The first is the story of the two nameless but very active daughters of Lot, who make their father drunk and then seduce him into impregnating them. The second is that of Tamar, the twice-widowed but childless daughter-in-law of Judah, who disguises herself as a harlot and seduces her father-in-law so that she will conceive a child. The third case is a bit ambiguous. It is the story of Ruth and Boaz, in which Ruth “uncovers the feet” of Boaz-or was it more than his feet?—as he sleeps on the threshing floor.
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The first incident of sperm stealing, involving Lot and his daughters, is recorded in Genesis 19. Lot, while living in Sodom, receives a visit from two angels. The men of the town demand that Lot turn his visitors over to them so that they can be “intimate” with them. Lot refuses, since he is responsible for the angels as his guests, and offers the men of Sodom his daughters instead. The men of the town nearly invade Lot’s house, but he and his family manage to escape at daybreak. The following day Sodom and Gomorrah and the other cities of the plain suffer a calamitous destruction. Lot and his daughters are safe, having taken shelter in a cave in the nearby mountains. They believe themselves to be the sole survivors of the catastrophe that has annihilated the cities below. The two virgin daughters, who only a short while earlier had been spared from gang rape after Lot offered them to the men of Sodom, now conspire to rape their own father. They think Lot is the last male on earth, and they take it upon themselves to perpetuate mankind. On two successive nights they make their father drunk, and he, in his pleasant stupor, unknowingly violates the world’s most widespread taboo.
The Hebrew words the Bible uses to describe the daughters’ motivation, unechaye meavinu zerah (Genesis 19:32), are a bit tricky to translate. The New Revised Standard Version renders the phrase as “preserve offspring through our father.” The New Jewish Publication Society translation is more accurate: “maintain life through our father.” To the daughters’ best knowledge, they have survived in order to continue mankind, and that can only be achieved by begetting offspring with their father. As a result of their actions, Lot becomes the father—and grandfather—of Moab and Ammon (Ben-Ammi), the ancestors of two Transjordanian people whose histories will later intersect with the Children of Israel.
A second incident of sperm stealing occurs in Genesis 38, the story of the twice-widowed Tamar and her father-in-law, Judah. Tamar had been married twice, first to Judah’s eldest son, Er, and then, after Er’s death, to his younger brother Onan. This remarriage had been in accordance with levirate law, which says that if a man dies without leaving male heirs, his widow must marry his brother so that the family name will be perpetuated (Deuteronomy 25:5–6). In Tamar’s case, not only did Er leave her childless but Onan did, too.
Following the deaths of his two sons, Judah sends Tamar back to her father’s house, presumably to wait until his third son, Shelah, comes of age. But as time passes and Tamar sees that she is not being given to Shelah, she takes matters into her own hands. She learns that the recently widowed Judah, having completed the mourning period for his wife, is coming to Timnah for the sheep shearing, a lively time of joy and revelry and drinking. Tamar disguises herself by removing her widow’s garb and donning a veil. Seeing her alongside the road, Judah assumes she is a harlot. Judah asks “to come in to her” (avo elayikh), for he “did not know” (ki lo yada) that she was his daughter-in-law. The text here uses a play on the double meanings of avo, “to come” or “to enter,” and yada, “to know,” both of which have sexual connotations.
Because Judah engages Tamar on impulse, he is unable to pay for her services, but, at her suggestion, he leaves as his pledge his signet, his cord and his staff. He departs without ever realizing that the “harlot” is Tamar in disguise.
Later in the story, when Judah hears that his widowed daughter-in-law is pregnant, he orders that she be burned for her supposed harlotry (Genesis 38:24). But the clever Tamar sends Judah his pledge; upon receiving it, he quickly acknowledges that he is the father of Tamar’s child and declares her to be more righteous than he. The twins that Tamar bears are known as the sons of Judah, not as his grandsons. One of the sons, Perez, will become an ancestor of Boaz, thus providing another connection between the Bible’s stories of sperm stealing.
As with Lot’s daughters, Tamar is depicted as blameless by the biblical narrator. She is dedicated to her task of bearing children for the family of Judah, and she is rewarded with twins—her compensation for two dead husbands and Judah’s compensation for his two dead sons.
The last incident of sperm stealing in the Bible occurs in the Book of Ruth. This book, unlike the stories of Lot’s daughters and of Tamar, contains elements of romantic attraction and love. The Book of Ruth tells of Naomi, a woman from Bethlehem, who moves with her husband and two sons to the land of Moab. Her husband dies there, and her sons marry Moabite women, Orpah and Ruth. In time the two sons die as well, and Naomi decides to return to Bethlehem to live among her relatives. She urges her widowed daughters-in-law to remain in Moab. Orpah decides to stay, but Ruth, uttering some of the Bible’s most famous words, refuses to part from Naomi: “Wherever you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried” (Ruth 1:16–17).
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Once the women return to Bethlehem, Ruth goes out to glean in the fields because they have no other means of obtaining food (Ruth 2:2–3). The field she chooses belongs to Boaz, a relative of Naomi’s, who takes notice of Ruth gleaning in the field. Acting on Naomi’s recommendation, Ruth washes and anoints herself and puts on her fine clothes; after nightfall she 038goes to the threshing floor. There she finds Boaz, who, having eaten and drunk, has fallen asleep near a heap of grain (Ruth 3:7). Ruth “uncovers his feet,” vategal margelotav, and lies down beside him. A little later, startled out of his drunken sleep, Boaz wakes to find a woman at his feet (Ruth 3:8). But the Hebrew word used here for “feet” can also be translated as “near the feet,” a euphemism for “genitalia.”2
Ruth identifies herself and asks Boaz to “spread [his] skirt”—literally, the wing of his cloak—“over [his] maidservant” (Ruth 3:9).3 Boaz thanks her for her kindness and good deeds, and urges her to stay with him until the morning (but to leave before she can be recognized); in return, he will do all she requires from him as a relative. He also expresses thanks that she has not preferred a younger man (Ruth 3:10–11). The next day, Boaz redeems Naomi’s land and claims Ruth as his wife; later she bears him a son, Obed (Ruth 4:9–10, 17). Ruth thus perpetuates the lineage of Naomi and her dead sons through Naomi’s nearest relative.
We should not conclude from these stories that sperm stealing was a regular practice among ancient Israelite women. But neither was it considered a cardinal crime. The biblical narrator condones sperm stealing when it is a response to death, particularly to a death in the family.
The women in the Bible’s sperm stealing stories are portrayed as unselfish. Lot’s daughters act to save mankind. Tamar wants to bear children to perpetuate Judah’s family and to replace Judah’s two deceased sons. Ruth wishes to compensate her mother-in-law Naomi’s loss of family and fortune after death robs her of her husband and sons in Moab.
In all three incidents, the women are aided by the intoxicating effects of alcohol on the men. And there is still another feature of these stories that ties them together: They all converge in the person of David, Israel’s renowned king. David is a great-grandson of Ruth and Boaz. Through Ruth the Moabite, he is also a descendant of Moab, the son of Lot and his oldest daughter. And through Boaz, David is a descendant of Perez, a son of Tamar and Judah. King David is the 044ultimate offspring of the biblical women who engaged in sperm stealing and thus ensured the continuation of their family line.
The Bible describes three cases of “sperm stealing,” incidents in which women seduce a man and make him an unwitting sperm donor. And all three instances involve an ancestor of David, ancient Israel’s great hero-king. Sperm stealing is a fact of human life as old as the most ancient civilizations and as contemporary as modern single women who decide that their marital status should not bar them from becoming mothers. We have examples of sperm stealing from the literature of ancient Sumer and ancient Greece.1 I suspect that if the reader does not personally know of a woman who […]
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See the epic of Enki and Ninhursga: “Uttu enticed her all too willing great-grandfather, the Sumerian subterranean freshwater god Enki” (S. Shifra and Jacob eds., In Those Days: Anthology of Mesopotamian Literature in Hebrew [Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1996], pp. 64–66; in Hebrew). In Greek literature, Myrhha (or Smyrna) fell in love with her father, King Cinyras the Cyprian, “and climb[ed] into his bed one dark night, when her nurse had made him too drunk to realize what he was doing” (Robert Graves, The Greek Myths [London: Penguin, 1960], sec. 18h, p. 69).
2.
The word recalls a method of taking an important vow in which one person would put his hand “under the thigh” of another (see Genesis 24:2–3, involving Abraham and his servant, and Genesis 47:29, concerning Jacob and Joseph). Nahum Sarna explains that “interpreters are unanimous that the thigh refers to the genital organ” (Genesis, JPS Torah Commentary [Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989], p. 162). Also see R. David Freedman, “‘Put Your Hand Under My Thigh’—The Patriarchal Oath,”BAR 02:02.
3.
Uncovering the wing of the coat or cloak means having incestuous relations (see Deuteronomy 23:1 and 27:20 in the NJPS version), while taking shelter under the wing of a man’s (or God’s) coat or cloak refers to marriage or symbolic marriage (see Ezekiel 16:8).
