But Judah’s son turns out to be an evil man. Er was wicked, so wicked that the Lord killed him. Here we encounter the disturbing fact that God, on rare occasions, may intervene to terminate a human life because of serious evil. It happened at this point, and it happened in the New Testament times, for instance, in Jerusalem with Ananias and Sapphira (see Acts 5) and, as Paul tells us, in the church at Corinth (1 Cor. 11:30).
