Onan

Mentioned 1751–1451 BC traditional (Jones)

Strong, the second son of Judah (Gen. 38:4-10; comp. Deut. 25:5; Matt. 22:24).

From Easton’s Bible Dictionary (1897).

Father: Judah
Mother: Daughter of Shuah
Siblings: Er, Shelah
Half-siblings: Zerah, Pharez
Tagged in: 6 verses

The 25th generation from Adam, counting Adam as the first.
Mentioned in the era of Egypt and the Exodus, 1706–1451 BC.
Named in the same verses as Er, Judah, Shelah, Canaan, Daughter of Shuah, Hamul, Hezron, and Pharez.

Computed from the data. Years are traditional (Jones).

Family

Two generations up and the children. Gold lines join partners; grey lines run from parent to child; a dotted line marks a parent named in the text but not by descent.

Family tree of Onan: two generations up and down, with partners and siblings.

Places

Places named in the same verses as Onan, with the number of verses they share; a larger marker means more. Locations follow OpenBible.info, which grades each identification. A dashed ring on the map marks a region, river, or mountain rather than a town.

location not graded: Canaan2

Timeline

The strip runs from Creation to AD 100; the shaded part, 1826–1376 BC, is drawn below at a larger scale around these mentions, with 6 contemporaries. Years are traditional (Jones), shown as recorded, not as settled fact.

Timeline of Onan’s mentions beside the people of the same era.

Mentions

Begat counts Onan in 6 tagged verses across 3 books.

Select a book to read its verses.

Genesis4
Numbers1
1 Chronicles1

The name in each translation

Text	Occurrences of each name
BSB	Onan 8
KJV	Onan 8
ASV	Onan 8

Whole-word, case-sensitive count of the name string (regex \bName\b, so possessives like "Abraham's" count) across the whole Bible text of each translation; this counts the string, not the person, so other people who share the name are included and pronoun references are not. How Begat counts

Every verse

All 6 tagged verses, by book, in canonical order. The Berean Standard Bible is shown; switch to the King James or American Standard Version.

Genesis4 verses

38:4
Again she conceived and gave birth to a son, and she named him Onan.
38:8
Then Judah said to Onan, “Sleep with your brother’s wife. Perform your duty as her brother-in-law and raise up offspring for your brother.”
38:9
But Onan knew that the offspring would not belong to him; so whenever he would sleep with his brother’s wife, he would spill his seed on the ground so that he would not produce offspring for his brother.
46:12
The sons of Judah: Er, Onan, Shelah, Perez, and Zerah; but Er and Onan died in the land of Canaan. The sons of Perez: Hezron and Hamul.

Numbers1 verse

26:19
The sons of Judah were Er and Onan, but they died in the land of Canaan.

1 Chronicles1 verse

2:3
The sons of Judah: Er, Onan, and Shelah. These three were born to him by Bath-shua the Canaanite. Er, Judah’s firstborn, was wicked in the sight of the LORD. So the LORD put him to death.

Easton’s Bible Dictionary

The full entry, public domain, as printed in 1897.

Strong, the second son of Judah (Gen. 38:4-10; comp. Deut. 25:5; Matt. 22:24). He died before the going down of Jacob and his family into Egypt.