Curse of Ham

[Coifi]

Ken, I'd be curious what reason you would give for Noah cursing Canaan and not Ham. I do not see how that would make narrative or moral sense apart from the interpretation Swiss and I have put forth.

What kind of "moral sense" does it make to curse a baby because of how he was conceived?

These suggestions are not all original with me, but could it be that Canaan was Ham's only son at that time? Or perhaps the son that was most like his father in disrespecting his elders? Or, (this is speculation, but not more speculative that the other wild story and at least it doesn't require ignoring parts of the account), was Canaan somehow involved in gleefully telling his grandpa about what happened? Josephus thought that maybe Noah was reluctant to curse his son, so placed the curse on his grandson instead.
Any one of these would make better narrative sense than pretending the account is about something different than what it says.

The detail of Ham being the youngest in Genesis 9 is important. The moral sense is that Ham would be attempting to secure the position as clan leader by producing offspring by the wife of the leader. Canaan, in this instance, is that offspring that would be used against Ham's brothers. Noah's curse is that Canaan will be a servant and not a master. In other words, not inheritors of Noah's authority. This method of usurpation is all throughout the Old Testament and the ancient world. Reuben and Jacob and David and his sons are two examples that spring to mind.

As for the interpretation that I've been advocating for as a whole, I do not see what use it is pretending this Hebrew idiom for sex does not exist. I've demonstrated this is a Biblically based idiom. Are there other ways in which this phrase is used in the Bible? Is this, perhaps, the only time it is used to mean a dude took off all of his clothes? There are other ways in Hebrew to describe someone not wearing clothes. That is not how this passage describes the situation. It is the Leviticus 18 expression.

And what part am I ignoring? Is it that Japheth and Shem covered their father's nakedness with a coat and turned their face away? This would fit the idiom. The nakedness of your father's wife is your father's nakedness. They were not participants in the slightest nor took any action to combat the usurpation act. Or is it the drunkenness that I'm ignoring? How would that demonstrate this opposing interpretation is wrong? Noah getting drunk would make for a good opportunity for a usurper. While I did not address these items, I certainly haven't ignored them. If I am ignorant of something, I'd appreciate a demonstration of what as opposed to accusations...

With the explanation I've been putting forth, Canaan is directly involved and all the seemingly little details fit together. It also makes sense of the entire Biblical context and the specifics of the curse. As far as I can tell, your interpretation suggests Noah's feelings got hurt because Ham saw him in his birthday suit so he cursed an uninvolved grandson.

If I may use your language, what use is there pretending that the context of the ancient world and the rest of the Bible doesn't matter in this account?

[JohnH]

The detail of Ham being the youngest in Genesis 9 is important. The moral sense is that Ham would be attempting to secure the position as clan leader by producing offspring by the wife of the leader. Canaan, in this instance, is that offspring that would be used against Ham's brothers. Noah's curse is that Canaan will be a servant and not a master. In other words, not inheritors of Noah's authority. This method of usurpation is all throughout the Old Testament and the ancient world. Reuben and Jacob and David and his sons are two examples that spring to mind.

As for the interpretation that I've been advocating for as a whole, I do not see what use it is pretending this Hebrew idiom for sex does not exist. I've demonstrated this is a Biblically based idiom. Are there other ways in which this phrase is used in the Bible? Is this, perhaps, the only time it is used to mean a dude took off all of his clothes? There are other ways in Hebrew to describe someone not wearing clothes. That is not how this passage describes the situation. It is the Leviticus 18 expression.

And what part am I ignoring? Is it that Japheth and Shem covered their father's nakedness with a coat and turned their face away? This would fit the idiom. The nakedness of your father's wife is your father's nakedness. They were not participants in the slightest nor took any action to combat the usurpation act. Or is it the drunkenness that I'm ignoring? How would that demonstrate this opposing interpretation is wrong? Noah getting drunk would make for a good opportunity for a usurper. While I did not address these items, I certainly haven't ignored them. If I am ignorant of something, I'd appreciate a demonstration of what as opposed to accusations...

With the explanation I've been putting forth, Canaan is directly involved and all the seemingly little details fit together. It also makes sense of the entire Biblical context and the specifics of the curse. As far as I can tell, your interpretation suggests Noah's feelings got hurt because Ham saw him in his birthday suit so he cursed an uninvolved grandson.

If I may use your language, what use is there pretending that the context of the ancient world and the rest of the Bible doesn't matter in this account?

Coifi,

That makes quite a bit of sense (and lines up with what a scholar of biblical Hebrew once explained to me about the idioms involved in that text).

One part I haven't grasped, though, is how this functioned in Canaanite society, or should I say, the pre-flood society:

The moral sense is that Ham would be attempting to secure the position as clan leader by producing offspring by the wife of the leader.

How, exactly, would that work? I do understand the Canaanites had some odd customs in that regard.

[ken_sylvania]

Are there other ways in which this phrase is used in the Bible? Is this, perhaps, the only time it is used to mean a dude took off all of his clothes?

Well, is it? My Bible has a verse giving instructions for the priests not to use steps/a ladder to access the altar of the Lord, so that people wouldn't be able to see up their skirts. Uses the same word for nakedness. The word is also sometimes translated indecency and is used plenty of times other than in Leviticus 18.

There are other ways in Hebrew to describe someone not wearing clothes. That is not how this passage describes the situation. It is the Leviticus 18 expression.

There are multiple ways even in English to describe a person removing all their clothes. We might describe such a person as naked, as indecent, or a variety of other expressions. It's not solid exegesis to say that a phrase can't mean what it says because the author could have used a different phrase but didn't.
In this case, the text seems to say that Noah "uncovered himself within his tent." Your interpretation claims that Ham uncovered his father's nakedness - which is not what the text actually says.

The novel interpretation seems to insist that the entire story is told in idiom - idioms for Ham sleeping with his father's wife, idioms for Shem and Japheth covering their father. And yet, there's no proof of any kind that the language is an idiom. In fact, even Leviticus 18 doesn't make it out to be an idiom.

Disrespect for parents, however, is in fact very clearly taught against, with stoning prescribed for a disrespectful son. Against that backdrop, a curse such as Noah pronounced isn't at all an extreme reaction to a son who saw his father in an indecent state and went out and laughed about it.

[Ernie]

What if we just say that we don't have enough of the story to advance a theory or draw a conclusion? What if we just allowed some things to be mystery?

[Soloist]

These suggestions are not all original with me, but could it be that Canaan was Ham's only son at that time? Or perhaps the son that was most like his father in disrespecting his elders? Or, (this is speculation, but not more speculative that the other wild story and at least it doesn't require ignoring parts of the account), was Canaan somehow involved in gleefully telling his grandpa about what happened? Josephus thought that maybe Noah was reluctant to curse his son, so placed the curse on his grandson instead.
Any one of these would make better narrative sense than pretending the account is about something different than what it says.

Wife: Actually, I think more than one early church father said those options, including that Ham, being blessed as one of Noah’s three sons, could not now be cursed, so Caanan was. As far as it goes, Esau was cursed in the womb, but he also lived up to it, so was that a curse or a prophecy?

A couple of Canaanites and a wife of a Hittite were in the line of Jesus, and I don’t know if there were any others since most of the kings don’t have their wives named. There was an ammonite named Naamah, but that would have been from the tribes descending from Lot, and she was probably pagan.

I would think that turning to the Lord canceled out any curses for individuals in the Old Testament anyway.

[ken_sylvania]

What if we just say that we don't have enough of the story to advance a theory or draw a conclusion? What if we just allowed some things to be mystery?

Yes, for the parts of the story that aren't explained.

[ken_sylvania]

As for the interpretation that I've been advocating for as a whole, I do not see what use it is pretending this Hebrew idiom for sex does not exist. I've demonstrated this is a Biblically based idiom.

Actually, though, you haven't demonstrated that the phrase used here (seeing a man's nakedness) is ever used to refer to sleeping with his wife.

Are there other ways in which this phrase is used in the Bible? Is this, perhaps, the only time it is used to mean a dude took off all of his clothes? There are other ways in Hebrew to describe someone not wearing clothes. That is not how this passage describes the situation. It is the Leviticus 18 expression.

In all the Bible accounts of illicit carnal relations, including the stories of Reuben and Absalom, this language is never used. It is, however, used to refer to the possibility of indecent exposure of the priests.
In order to make this story out to be a sexual encounter, one has to (a) make Noah's action (uncovering himself) out to be Ham's action instead, (b) make the language used into a figure of speech with a meaning that we find nowhere else in Hebrew Scripture storytelling, (c) make the description of Shem and Japheth's actions into another figure of speech that is also found nowhere else in Hebrew Scripture and (d) in doing c, convert the brothers' actions into a passive "failure to get involved" in place of the active "address the problem and prevent further shame to their father" that is recorded in the text.

I'm just not buying it. Of course, I'm already prejudiced against the idea that in our modern era we are better positioned to tease out the details of Old Testament accounts than were the Hebrew scholars of past millennia.

[MattY]

I still hold the traditional voyeurism/disrespect view, but I see merit in both sides' arguments (more than I initially expected at least, when I first heard of the maternal incest view). While the maternal incest view is modern, there are multiple other views that go back to ancient times - some hold a paternal incest view (that Ham violated his father), and others argued that Ham castrated him. So the idea that there must have been something else going on (than mere voyeurism/disrespect) has a long history.

What really gave me pause is not only Lev. 18, but also Lev. 20:17, where seeing someone's nakedness (sister's/brother's) is used in parallel with "uncover" their nakedness - both expressions were an idiom for the sexual sins being discussed. And Lev. 18 shows that uncovering a man's wife's nakedness - i.e., lying with her sexually - is also uncovering his own nakedness (verses 8 and 16). That at least makes the reading plausible if that was all we had to go on.

However, the same expressions can be used in other ways. Ex. 20:26 (the wording here is more similar to Leviticus 18, "uncover" or "expose" rather than "see") is not an idiom at all, it's literal bodily exposure. Gen. 42:9,12 use the term "see the nakedness of the land" to refer to spying and exposing weaknesses - in this case it should not be taken as a sexual metaphor but as exposure. Some of the prophets use the same term (uncover her nakedness) to refer to public humiliation - I suppose it may be arguable that they also are referring to sexual humiliation, but it seems less clear.

So if that analysis is correct, we should take each instance of these phrases contextually, rather than seeing the same idiomatic expression in each.

The alternative views of Gen. 9 usually focus heavily on verse 22 ("saw the nakedness of"), rather than verse 21 (Noah "was drunken, and he was uncovered within his tent"). But verse 21 makes more sense in its plain sense, since it can be obviously a direct result of drunkenness. (You'd have to posit some additional idioms not mentioned - such as, Noah's wife was uncovered in verse 21? But then you're introducing more and more additional ideas into the text). And when that is granted, it begins to make more sense to take the rest of the passage in its plain sense as well. Noah was naked, and Ham saw it...rather than Noah was naked, and then Ham metaphorically saw his nakedness, meaning he either violated his father or his mother. It makes more sense to me to take both plainly. Shem and Japheth's actions make more sense then as well. They covered the nakedness of their father with a cloth - and the text makes specific reference to the fact that their faces were turned backward so that they did not "see" his nakedness. It makes much more sense to take everything literally in light of that - if it was idiomatic, they merely would have had to cover their father or mother and not have done what Ham did to them. The direction that their faces were turned wouldn't have mattered.

Furthermore, this would be the only time in the narratives of the patriarchs that such an idiomatic expression is used in the storytelling. The stories of Scripture don't shy away from telling us plainly the sins of even its heroes. The idiomatic expression only comes in the formal instructions given in the Law.