Bottoms Up! (or Stories Never Told in Bible Class)

So the Flood story gets even better. Noah and his family leave the ark. Noah builds an altar to the LORD and, taking of every clean animal and of every clean bird, he offered burnt offerings on the altar. It is a good thing he packed extra animals and birds!

God says have at it, be fertile and increase, and fill the earth. So Noah says, “I’ll bring the wine!” Ok, so Noah didn’t say that. But he did plant a vineyard and drank of the wine and became drunk. He took off his clothes in his tent, and passed out.

His son, Ham, saw his father’s nakedness and told his two brothers outside. They backed into the tent and covered Noah up. They turned their faces and did not see Noah’s nakedness.

Noah woke up and cursed, not Ham, but Ham’s son, Canaan. What?

Canaan was an actual person but also referred to the folks that descended from him. The Cannanites. Much like referring to Israel could mean the actually person Israel (Jacob) or the people of Israel. Israel would eventually take over the land of Canaan.

The curse is that Canaan would be slaves to his brothers.

So what was so bad about seeing dear old dad naked that brought a curse upon Canaan? There are three possibilities. Two I’ve never heard in my many hours of bible class.

First, indecency was taboo. Combine that with honoring your parents, even though there are no ten commandments yet, and it was a no-no to see your dad naked and not do anything about it except tell your brothers.

Second, to uncover the nakedness of a man means to have sexual relations with his wife. This would make him guilty of incest.

Third, a less common expression, to see the nakedness, means to have sex. This would make Ham guilty of homosexual rape.

Reasons two or three would seem to make Noah’s curse make a little more sense. But it could simply be Ham saw his dad naked. I don’t know.

The curse/event could have been ‘thought up’ to explain the sexual perverseness that Israelite culture sometimes thought to be typical of the Canaanites.

Did one group of people use this story to belittle and keep another group of people down? Is this a lesson on how to marginalize someone? When you think of and call yourself God’s chosen people, how do you view others? I guess the same could be said for Christians.

I wonder why I’ve never seen this part of the story on the old flannel board.

~ by bart on January 17, 2008.