Abraham and Onan

Long before God gave Moses the Ten Commandments, Abraham was encouraged by his wife Sarah to sleep with her handmaiden Haggar.  There was nothing kinky about it, it was all about producing a male heir, which was a really big deal in those days.  At the age of 80, Sarah was well past her child bearing years and figured that an illegitimate son was better than no son at all.  Abraham and Haggar begot Ishmael, and then a miracle happened, Abraham and Sarah begot Isaac.  Being the first born, Ishmael was in line to inherit even though he was illegitimate, and Haggar kept rubbing it in Sarah's face.  To resolve this, Sarah asked Abraham to banish Haggar and her little bastard from the camp.  Abraham was reluctant to do this until God told him to go ahead, promising to take care of Ishmael and his mother and to make them the progenitors of a mighty nation.  So it came to pass that Isaac became the father of the Jews and Ishmael became the father of the Muslims, while Abraham is regarded as the father of them both even unto this day.

I seem to remember that Onan was indeed punished for his sin, struck dead by a bolt of lightning or something like that.  Contrary to popular belief, however, Onan's sin was not masturbation, it was coitus interruptus.  It was the custom in those days for the brother of a married man who died childless to beget a son with the widow in his dead brother's name.  Onan never did like his brother and didn't want to beget a son in his name, so he withdrew at the last moment and "spilled the semen on the ground".