There’s this strange moment in Noah’s life where he gets drunk, falls down naked, his son Ham sees him naked, and then he curses Ham. It leads to the frequent accusation that Noah was a drunkard, which at best might be true but is missing the wood for the trees.
You can read the story in Genesis 9. Is Noah just an angry drunk? What did Ham do wrong?
It’s also been the cause of much racist nonsense, with the curse of Ham linked to theories where a particular ‘race’ (in the modern sense rather than the Biblical one) are cursed because of their descent from Ham. All of that should be rejected as evil. The first thing we should notice is that Ham isn’t cursed. There is no curse of Ham. Instead his son, Noah’s grandson, Canaan is cursed as a result of Ham’s actions. Which feels instinctively unfair to us but is perhaps a hint that something more is going on here. It also makes us think of the eventual defeat of the various Canaanite peoples by the Hebrews—the eventual result of the curse. That doesn’t clarify what’s happening but it’s worth noticing the way this pans out in the story.
So, what’s going on? Let’s try and look at this interrogatively. There are three broad questions to answer: Does Noah get drunk? What does Ham do to him? Why does he curse Canaan rather than Ham.
Does Noah get drunk?
Yes. That was easy enough. It’s his characterisation as a drunkard that I take some issue with, partly because it assumes a habitual behaviour but mostly because it tries to find the moral of the story in Noah’s misuse of God’s good gift of wine rather than in whatever Ham has done wrong.
Noah may have been a drunkard, but there’s nothing in the text that would make us think so. It is possible to read the text as suggesting that he simply rested after drinking, though I think that unlikely looking at how the Hebrew word is used elsewhere in the Bible. I think the Bible says he got a bit merry and went to sleep—unwise, but not the parallel to Adam’s fall in the story. I don’t think this is a good thing or to be commended (Ephesians 5), nor is it incidental to the story, but it’s not its hinge either.
Noah’s planting of the vineyard was a good thing, a fulfilment of his declaration to be the man of rest. He prefigures Christ as the provider of wine at the table and is planting a new Eden.
A snake in the garden
There is a snake in the garden though: Ham. Noah removes his robe of office within his tent to sleep. Perhaps someone else wants to usurp or ridicule his role; the robe is a textual clue to this.
What is it that Ham does? A flat reading of the text is that he glances at his father without his clothes on and mocks him to his brothers, who then carefully recover Noah’s nakedness. This leaves us with questions though, why is it that this is worthy of a curse? The text seems to suggest that what Ham has done is worse than it seems at first glance. Noah’s act of disrobing in his tent is not of itself strange, either, he remains covered by the tent.
There are two real options as to what Ham did (there are many other suggestions, but two that seem reasonable to me), both of them revolve around authority, submission, and usurpation. There is a common theme in Genesis of younger sons, or occasionally even first sons, wanting to usurp their father’s role. Think of Rueben’s rape of Jacob’s concubines, an attempted usurpation of Jacob’s right rule over his family; as a result, Rueben doesn’t inherit despite being the firstborn and Judah inherits instead (Genesis 49).
We know something similar is going on by the nature of the curse, it involves authority and submission, implying a sin of rebellion.
We might notice that Shem and Japheth (typologically Jews and Gentiles—see Irenaeus On the Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching) solve the problem by re-robing Noah, and that the robe bears the definite article ‘the mantle.’ Clothes, especially robes and mantles, are authoritative garments in the Bible’s symbolic world—much like the metaphorical meaning that ‘mantle’ bears in English today. They replace his authority.
What did Ham do?
There are two broad options:
Perhaps he spied on his Father as a deliberate act to invade his privacy and tear down his authority. Telling Shem and Japheth here is less laughing about how fat and wobbly Noah looks all passed out and more trying to get them to support his usurping bid by taking the garment. Instead, having none of it, they replace their Father’s authority to dramatise their refusal to join the rebellion. This would be what James B. Jordan relates in Primeval Saints.
Or something sexual is happening. There are reconstructions that suggest that Ham tried to rape his Father, but that seems unlikely. We can notice though the phrase ‘uncovering his nakedness of your Father’ recurs in Leviticus 18 repeatedly. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father’s wife, it is your father’s nakedness (Leviticus 18.8). The phrasing is similar but not identical, but it’s at least plausible that Ham rapes his mother while Noah sleeps off the feast. This would be closer to Reuben’s actions, Ham would be trying to take over the family not by stealing the robe but by stealing the wife. It also fits a recurring pattern in Genesis—think of Lots daughters or of Pharoah with Sarai—where the fathering of children wrongly is how the snake attacks the people of God. We might also notice the use of wine in Lot’s ‘encounter’ with his daughters and in David’s with Uriah and Bathsheba. There are echoes here.
Which is more plausible? That’s not the easiest to determine. I think the first makes slightly more sense of Shem and Japheth’s actions; either way this is an attempt to usurp authority so their dramatised replacing of authority follows Ham’s actions. I think the second fits well with the flow of Genesis, and lean that way, but I’m not entirely convinced.
Whichever is right, the story chooses to hint at what was going on rather than state it outright, which itself is worthy of reflection.
What about the curse?
So why is Canaan cursed? In the incestuous relationship reading he’s cursed because Noah’s wife is Canaan’s mother. The usurping line is cursed. There’s something notable, if this is right, in the people who occupy the land of promise—who descend into greater and greater wickedness as time continues—as being a literal attempt to usurp the line of the child of promise.
In the other he’s cursed because an appropriate curse on a rebellious son is that his son rebels against him. This is slightly less clear to me, because the curse doesn’t reflect Canaan rebelling against Ham but the other brothers ruling over Canaan. It’s the curse as much as anything that leans me towards the incestuous child reconstruction.
How should handle the text today?
You can preach against alcohol abuse, but I think that’s missing the central point. If you do you should consider also including the goods of wine as a drink to bring and typify rest, when well used—this is part of the reason we drink wine together each Sunday at the Lord’s table.
The grand story of the snake and the woman is lurking in the background again, which begs for telling (and applying!). You can also speak of authority (which is a good thing even if often misused) and submission (which when given to good authority is a virtue), as well as how usurpation is not the way to respond to even the worst abuses of authority (think of David in the cave with Saul). God does not bless usurpers.
Photo by Dan Meyers on Unsplash
To subscribe and receive email notifications for future posts, scroll all the way to the bottom of the page.
Would you like to support my work? The best thing you can do is share this post with your friends. Why not consider also joining my Patreon to keep my writing free for everyone. You can see other ways to support me here.
nuakh 