Genesis 9:20-25
(NIV)
Noah, a man of the
soil, proceeded to plant a vineyard. When he drank some of its wine, he became
drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent. Ham, the father of
Canaan, saw his father's nakedness and told his two brothers outside. But Shem
and Japheth took a garment and laid it across their shoulders; then they walked
in backward and covered their father's nakedness. Their faces were turned the
other way so that they would not see their father's nakedness. When Noah awoke
from his wine and found out what his youngest son had done to him, he said,
"Cursed be Canaan! The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers."
How
could it be that the only man on earth who found favor with God and kept God
from destroying every single living creature on earth proceeded to get drunk
after the great flood? Just
amazing! Yet, it is equally amazing that
the Bible does not hold back the truth, no matter how ugly it is. If the Bible were a fake, do you think that
it would contain this story of Noah getting drunk? I don’t think so. Noah’s drunkenness points out that even the
very best man on the earth, even one favored by God, still has his
weaknesses. Even though Gen 6:8-9 tells
of Noah being righteous and blameless, he still was vulnerable against sin and
it finally caught him after the flood.
So when Paul wrote that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of
God” (Romans 3:23), even a righteous and blameless man can become a
sinner.
What
was the sin of Ham? OK, he saw his
father naked, but why was that a sin?
Some have speculated that since Gen 9:24 states that “he knew what his
youngest son had done to him” (the action verb being “done”, not “look”) Ham
did more than look, with one possibility being some kind of homosexual
action. Yet there’s nothing to support
this. Others have pointed to Leviticus
20:11 where it reads; “The man who lies with his father’s wife has uncovered
his father’s nakedness”. Therefore, Ham
had sex with Noah’s wife. Yet, that
cannot be true because Ham’s brothers walked in after Ham. The most plausible explanation is simply that
Ham did not show respect for his father, did not try covering his nakedness,
and even may have mocked his father when telling his brothers.
Noah
cursed Ham’s son, Canaan, not Ham.
Why? The Bible doesn’t tell us
why. The only clue is that Canaan was
Ham’s youngest son as Ham was to Noah.
Could it have been a precursor to Exodus 20:5 that speaks of the sins of
the father being visited on the children even to the third and fourth
generation? We just don’t know.
The
curse of Canaan has been used for thousands of years by white supremacists as
justification why Negroes were to be slaves (“May Canaan be the slave of Shem”,
Gen 9:26) since descendants of Ham mostly ended up in Africa. Yet this is a horrible lie as the Canaanites
were not black but wicked people who lived in ancient Palestine, Phoenicia, and
Carthage and were part of the tribes defeated by Joshua (e.g. Num 14:43, Josh
9:1). Ham’s other two sons were not
cursed.
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