There are some advantages to being the baby of a family.
I am the baby of my family, and one key advantage is having the example of your older siblings. By observing my brothers, I figured out where “the line” was with our parents. Their example taught me.
We can learn a lot by observing others. How often do we pay our own “dumb taxes” simply because we don’t learn from the examples of others?
For the past several weeks, we witnessed the covenant God made with post-flood humanity. It culminated with the sign of the covenant: God’s bow in the sky, a rainbow.
We continue moving through Genesis in the final section of the third tolodoth (translated as “this is the account of…”. These are the divisions of the major sections in Genesis). We read in Genesis 9:18-23:
18 The sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem, Ham and Japheth. (Ham was the father of Canaan.) 19 These were the three sons of Noah, and from them came the people who were scattered over the whole earth.
Genesis 9:18-23, New International Version
20 Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded to plant a vineyard. 21 When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent. 22 Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father naked and told his two brothers outside. 23 But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it across their shoulders; then they walked in backward and covered their father’s naked body. Their faces were turned the other way so that they would not see their father naked.
With God’s covenant in place, we turn the page into the “normalcy” of life on Earth. It seems no matter the calamity, humanity moves on. After Hurricane Katrina, we spent several weeks traveling to St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana (where my in-laws had lived). It was back-breaking work, hot, miserable clean-up work, but life moved on.
Beginning at Genesis 9:18, we see Noah and his sons’ routine. This is the “new normal” for them in repopulating the planet and caring for it. Today, we learn that sin was not too far around the corner for this “new normal.”
When biographers write stories, their information is limited. When we write our own, we know too much information. When God writes the story, He knows the truth. This account is the truth of how post-flood humanity responded to the goodness of God.
Don’t let verses 18 and 19 confuse you. There was no other humanity beyond Noah’s family at this point. Verses 18 and 19 foreshadow what we’ll see in Genesis 10. When the human author, Moses, is writing this down, a lot of time has passed. He knows what’s coming next.
Like Adam, Noah worked the ground. He planted a vineyard, made wine after harvest time, and got himself drunk. We already have a problem. Noah is drunk and naked in his tent.
It is interesting how when Adam and Eve indulged (Genesis 3), they discovered they were naked. Noah, after indulging too much, also got himself naked. In Ancient Near Eastern mindsets, nakedness was not just a term for taking off one’s clothes. It carries moral overtones.
Noah took off his clothes. He lost his inhibitions due to drunkenness. He was knocked out, probably unconscious, in his tent.
Verse 22 reports that Ham, Noah’s youngest son, comes along. The text foreshadows by mentioning Ham’s son Canaan (who was yet to be born). Canaan is the youngest son of Ham (who, again, is Noah’s youngest son). Canaan’s descendants gave the people of Israel A LOT of trouble and were considered cursed.
Instead of showing his father respect by covering him, Ham disrespected his father by gossiping to his brothers. Disrespect of one’s parents was considered an assault against God. It was a rejection of the order He had created.
And Ham disrespects his father. This disrespect is magnified by the actions of Ham’s brothers, Shem and Japheth (verse 23). They covered their father’s nakedness. They also hid their faces so they wouldn’t disrespect him by seeing him naked.
Ham didn’t learn from his older brothers. He will pay a price for not witnessing their respect towards Noah. The curse of sin in humanity continues with Ham’s disrespect of his father. Ultimately, he disrespects God’s order.
It seems humanity didn’t learn about the seriousness of God’s feelings toward sin. We would be wise not to repeat their folly.
Life Meets Theology 