Judah said to Onan, “Go in to your brother’s wife, and perform the duty of a husband’s brother to her, and raise up seed to your brother.”
⛓ Read Genesis 38 forward — the whole chapter and its afterlife →Where this passage surfaces again, sorted by the strength of the link. Each kind of reuse — formal quotation, deliberate allusion, faint echo, figural pattern — carries its own mark. Follow any reference to read it in place.
Allusion3
A deliberate verbal borrowing without a citation formula.
Judah's command to Onan to 'raise up offspring for your brother' is the narrative enactment of levirate duty and the closest verbal parallel to 'raise up children for his brother.' Moderate volume, coherent with the Deuteronomy citation as the precedent case the Sadducees invoke.
Medium confidenceThe earliest narrative enactment of levirate duty is Onan, commanded to 'go in to your brother's wife and raise up offspring for your brother' — the precise idiom the Sadducees use. Genesis 38 is the practical backdrop to the Deuteronomic statute and likely shapes the wording of their hypothetical.
Medium confidenceJudah commands Onan to 'go in unto thy brother's wife... and raise up seed to thy brother' — the narrative instance of levirate duty behind the Sadducees' test case (22:24-28).
Medium confidence