Genesis 9:18-29

Bible Study Lesson for June 10

Usually on Wednesday nights, some in our community get together to share prayer requests, we pray together, and I bring a Bible lesson for them. Last week, we covered Genesis 8:13-22 so I will pick up today where we left off.

First I’d like to talk about prayer requests. Online communication being what it is, I would rather not get into specific requests in this space, and will leave that for the more private communications that the church has with each other. But I do want to remember a few general prayer requests:

-our government, those making decisions on our behalf

-those in the medical community

-those in food service, grocery stores, and other essential businesses

-those in other businesses that are opening and preparing to open

-teachers and students still figuring out what the closures of schools means for them -prisoners and prison guards

-first responders

-those whose life and income has been disrupted by the current crisis.

I also want to remember all of those suffering from Covid-19 and the communities that it is affecting, including our own.

In addition to these, let’s also pray for everyone involved with demonstrations around our country and the world.

-protesters

-police

-government officials

-hospitals

-reconciliation

Take a moment to pray for these folks now before we begin.

Genesis 9:18-29

In last week’s study, we learned about the covenant between God and Noah. We learned that God’s covenant is a commitment to remember. God remembers promises made and God wants us people to remember the promises as well. Immediately after the story of the covenant with Noah, we have a story of how relationships play out in the small surviving human community that is Noah’s family.

The Sons of Noah: Verses 18-19

We must remember that the narrative of Genesis is primarily concerned with genealogies. One of the reasons the book exists is to explain to the people of God how they came to be and how they relate to their neighbors. And so the story of the three sons of Noah is a story about Israel’s ancestors relating to their neighbors and enemies. 

The story of Noah’s “curse of Ham” has been interpreted in a lot of ways throughout history, including as a justification for American slavery. Often in those justifications, the “curse of Ham” was conflated with the “mark of Cain” (from Genesis 4), and blackness of skin was seen as a sign of the twin curses. This interpretation ignores at least three things. First, Cain’s mark was not a mark of curse, but of protection. Second, Cain is nowhere in Scripture linked to Ham genealogically. Further, even if Cain was linked to Ham, that would also be a link to both Shem and Japheth, the other two sons of Noah. Third, once we read Genesis in the great narrative of the Bible, we can begin to see that all division is a result of sin. Since sin has been conquered in Jesus Christ, those divisions no longer hold weight for people of faith. Even within the narrative, the concern is not with all the sons of Ham, which include Ethiopia (Cush) and Egypt, but focuses explicitly on Ham’s son Canaan. Canaan’s descendants will fight over the Promised Land with the people of Israel. 

Bible interpreter Walter Brueggemann argues that the racial understanding of this text misses Ham’s actual sin. It is more helpful for people of faith to learn the “family rules” the story reveals, instead of focusing on the conflict and its consequences. That will be our focus as we move into an interpretation of this story.

These two verses set the stage by renewing our focus on Shem, Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah. They are the ancestors of the whole human race. This will be the story of how their descendants become separated from one another. Instead of the descendants of Noah peopling the earth, future generations will be identified by their heritage as one of the sons of Noah. Nations will get their names from this lineage.

Shem will be the ancestor of Israel. It is from his name that we get the root of the word “Semitic” which is sometimes used to refer to Jewish people today. Ham, as this story already tells us, is the father of Canaan. In the next chapter we have a fuller genealogy which also relates Ham as father Egypt and Cush. Egypt and Israel will have a complicated relationship, as we see when we move from Genesis to Exodus. At the end of Genesis, Jacob (Israel) and his sons all seek refuge in Egypt from a severe famine. Exodus begins with that refugee status having been transformed into slavery. Later on, the kingdoms of Israel and Judah will have periods of alliance and war with Egypt as well as powerful neighbors. Japheth’s lineage is a bit more obscure, but includes Tarshish and other seafaring peoples that will appear later in the Bible.

Family Trouble: Verses 20-27

Here is a quick outline of the story: Noah is credited as the inventor of wine, is apparently the first to get drunk from wine, passes out drunk and naked, is seen by his son Ham, who tells his brothers who then take pains to cover their father without seeing his “nakedness.” 

I want to talk about three things:

1) How the Genesis story interprets Noah’s drunkenness

2) How to understand Ham’s sin

3) How Shem and Japheth’s treatment of their father provides a model for human relationship contrary to their brother’s action.

First, Noah’s drunkenness is not condemned by the narrative in and of itself. Instead, the story seems to focus on the vulnerability that Noah’s drunkenness occasions, and holds those in relationship with him responsible for guarding him in his vulnerable state. Within the logic of the story, Noah would have no experience with wine and would not know what it would cause. His drunken vulnerability provides an occasion to reveal the character of his two sons. Later in the Old Testament, priests will be forbidden from performing their religious duties while under the influence of alcohol (Leviticus 10:9), and wisdom literature will point out the pitfalls of drinking (Proverbs 20:1), but Noah as of right now has no experience with these things.

Second: what specifically is the sin of Ham? Is it seeing his father’s “nakedness”? The concept of nakedness will be important in the law of Israel recorded in the Old Testament. In Leviticus 18:6-18, “uncovering the nakedness” of family members and their spouses is forbidden. This seems to indicate a specific prohibition of sexual activity within close family, and an honoring of marriage covenants between family members and their spouses. But there is something deeper at stake. In the context of Leviticus 18, the prohibitions begin: “You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt, where you lived, and you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan, to which I am bringing you” (Leviticus 18:3). As I have said before, one of the functions of the Genesis story is to shape the mind of Israel into a particular set of values. They are to avoid an “Egypt mindset” as well as a “Canaan mindset.” Mindset is reflected in action.

So the first problem for Ham is that he has seen his father’s nakedness. We do not know exactly why or how Ham came to see into the tent where Noah was lying. Perhaps he sought out a way to embarrass his father. But there is a possibility that it was an innocent accident, in which case Ham’s sin would be in what he does next. Having seen his father in a vulnerable position, Ham goes and tells his brothers. This could provide an opportunity for Shem and Japheth to take advantage of Noah as well.

The third important thing in this story is how Shem and Japheth respond. Based what Ham told them, they take care to cover their father up, shielding his vulnerability and respecting his body by approaching backwards so that they do not directly look at their vulnerable father. This provides a model for how to respect and defend the vulnerability of another person when they are not in a position to protect themselves. Shem and Japheth’s correct behavior makes it clear that Ham’s sin is not what he has seen, but what he does with what he has seen.

At the end of the story, we have Noah’s response. The father of all the nations that come after him, Noah curses his grandson Canaan for the indiscretion of Ham. A close reading of the rest of the Old Testament shows some of the laws for Israel keep their behaviors different from their Canaanite neighbors. The Israelites and others in the Old Testament saw the way humans treated each other as a religious matter. We should remember that as Christians formed by the Old and New Testaments, this is how we should live as well.

Conclusion: Verses 28-29

After this episode of scandal and curse, Noah exits the story. He lives 350 years after the flood to the ripe age of 950. People’s lifetimes will become shorter as the narrative goes on, but it is worth pointing out again that one year in the story can take 3 chapters, while 350 years can be summed up in two verses. In those years, things happened. Children were born, families fought and were reconciled, life and death went on.

What I want us to take away from this story is how the Bible encourages us to respect the vulnerability of our fellow humans. Especially those to whom we are connected. The Bible doesn’t say, “Well Noah had it coming because he was drunk and naked.” The responsibility for right action is on the people who have agency or an ability to act. Too often we look for reasons to explain away human suffering. We say “they brought it on themselves,” and we ignore their hunger, their thirst, their nakedness. We allow them to be taken advantage of. The Bible calls us to guard their dignity, to cover them with our cloaks without making a show of their suffering.