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| Image: Jill Wellington, via Pixabay |
After The Great Flood, which preserved the continuity of mankind through the family of Noah, one might expect that these paragons of humanity would live sterling lives and proceed to, well, "live happily ever after". They were, after all, THE family God chose to preserve through the cataclysm that killed off every other human on the face of the Earth.
Instead, the very first story recorded in the Scriptures after Noah and family had disembarked from the Ark, is a debacle of drunkenness, nudity, ridicule, humiliation, cursing and perhaps things more diabolical.
Human Nature, that carnal, sin-sick inheritance from our forefather, Adam, is a real beaut.
The story is found in Genesis 9:18-29.
What would you first do when you came off the Ark, after nearly a year of watery captivity?
Well, you'd probably do what you believe you do best. In verse 20, we are told Noah was "a man of the soil" (Berean Study Bible). In other words, he was, at heart, a farmer. Of course, after you've lived 600 years, you would have probably learned lots of skills. But, he loved to farm, apparently. So, he planted a vineyard of luscious, juicy grapes. And, when they were ripe, he made wine.
Perhaps he had not had wine in over a year. Who knows? For whatever the reason, he enjoyed his new wine so very much that he passed out drunk, totally naked, in his tent.
That's when his youngest son, Ham, comes on the scene. "Wait a minute," you might say, "wasn't Ham the middle son? They are usually listed as 'Shem, Ham and Japeth'!" Yes, they are, but many translators and commentators believe Ham was the youngest. Even though Genesis jumps around a lot on this topic, consider the following scriptures:
After Noah was 500 years old he became the father of Shem, Ham and Japheth.
Genesis 5:32
{This means all three were born, grew up and got married, during the several decades Noah was building the Ark.)
Noah was 600 years old when the floodwaters came upon the Earth.
Genesis 7:6
Sons were also born to Shem, whose older brother was Japheth....
Genesis 10:21*
Genesis 9:24 tells us flat-out, plain as day, that Ham was Noah's youngest son. So, at least that's settled...
Therefore, the birth order was as follows? Japheth, Shem and Ham.
A point of concern is that they are usually, though not always mentioned in this order: Shem, Ham and Japheth. But, the Bible will often list people in order of importance, as opposed to (in this case) chronological age.
*At the risk of perseverating on this point, go and read several different translations of Genesis 10:21. In some translations, Shem is called the oldest; in others, Japheth was deemed the oldest. For that matter, look at the Sources listed below. Then....refer back to the title of this blog post.
Allright, moving further on into the strangeness ....
So, Ham wanders into his father's tent and finds him drunk and naked. What would you do? I would hope I would cover up my parent, leave, and say nothing of the incident.
That's not what Ham did. The Hebrew word root used in 9:24 is "ra'ah", which means to "see keenly". We find the same root used in Deuteronomy 14:13, in noun form this time, to denote birds of prey that use their eyesight to hunt. Some scholars theorize Ham even went and got his son, Canaan, and showed the sight to him, which is why Canaan was cursed by name in Genesis 9:24.
Other scholars believe some sort of incest or rape took place, involving Canaan in some way, and that the incident was so awful that Scripture is deliberately curt and vague about it, out of piety.
However, all of these are just conjecture. We must be careful what we "read into" the scripture.
What IS explicitly stated is that Ham did NOT cover his father up. Instead, he went and told his brothers about the humiliating situation. In contrast, the two older brothers, went and got a covering, walked backwards into the tent, and covered their father. Huge difference in behavior.
Let's go back to Canaan a minute. Why did Noah specifically curse him? Ham had four sons, with Canaan being the fourth, the youngest (Genesis 10:6). (In addition to Canaan, he had Put, Cush and Misraim.) Why Canaan? Well, again, we honestly do not know. Anything else would be guessing. I've mentioned possible explanations above, but that is just it - - they are merely possibilities.
Another curious thing about the end of chapter is that, sometime after cursing the line of Ham via Canaan, Noah goes on to bless his other two sons, but did not ordain the birthright to flow through the eldest, Japheth. Instead, he blessed them both, but decreed that Japheth and his descendants would serve the descendants of Shem. (Jesus Christ was born from the ancestral line of Shem.) In a future post, we will examine Noah's 16 grandsons and what we can determine from Scripture about where they settled in the big, wide world.
Sources:
https://www.gotquestions.org/sons-of-Noah.html
https://answersingenesis.org/contradictions-in-the-bible/my-three-sons/
https://thetorah.com/noah-ham-and-the-curse-of-canaan-who-did-what-to-whom-in-the-tent/
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