Shameful Act In the ancient world merely seeing one's father naked was a highly offensive act. The father's position as moral and spiritual head would be held in disrepute and the family unit would suffer as a result of this. The culture in which this event occurred considered it a capital crime for a child to strike their father.
It seems that Ham innocently came upon his father after he had uncovered himself in a drunken stupor. The sin of Ham, therefore, is that he told his brothers of what he had seen. In doing so, it brought shame to the entire family. It is also possible that Ham tried to seize the leadership of the family at this juncture. Descendants Punished Many commentators believe that the curse of Ham was not pronounced immediately after the event but at the end of Noah's life.
However, the natural reading of the text has the curse occurring directly after Noah realized what had happened. The act of Ham could not go unpunished. In the curse of Noah upon Canaan, he was not punishing him personally for something his father Ham had done. The words of Noah refer not to Canaan himself, but to the nation that would come from him.
Ham had caused a breach between himself and his father that called for some type of judgment. The judgment would occur on his descendants. Ham's descendants foreshadowed the deeds of his descendants. The contrast between the reactions is the basis of the following blessings and curses on their descendants. It speaks of two groups of mankind. Shem covered nakedness and hid shame, while Ham exposed Noah's nakedness. Summary The cursing of Ham has to do with the sin of Ham when his father Noah uncovered himself at his drunkenness.
Though we are not told the exact sin of Ham, we do know that it was reprehensible enough for God to curse the line of his son Canaan. The judgment was not directed to Canaan personally but rather to his descendants.
Donate Contact. Blue Letter Bible is a c 3 nonprofit organization. APA Format. Chicago Format. SBL Format. Share This Page. Follow Blue Letter Bible. Blue Letter Bible. Login To Your Account. Check your email for password retrieval Enter Your Email or Username. Login [? Your gift is doubled! Partner with us to reach more people for Christ.
If you already have an account, Sign in. Was Noah wrong for cursing Canaan? Troy Lacey, AiG—U. How did you come to the conclusion that Ham mocked his father in Genesis —25?
All I see is that Ham saw his father was naked and told his brother. Am I missing something here, a Hebrew definition maybe? Or is it possible that Noah was in the wrong to curse Canaan?
It is highly improbable that Noah was wrong for cursing Canaan, even though he had just awakened from his drunken sleep. Keep in mind that Scripture contains different kinds of curses. The one in view here seems to be a prophetic utterance of malediction upon the descendants of Canaan. This is not an idle or knee-jerk vengeful proclamation, but one of prophetic foresight. Compare this with the curses announced in Deuteronomy —26 that serve as a warning of what would happen to the Israelites if they disobeyed.
The Bible does not shy away from recording the sins of its key figures, and at times it reveals the motivations behind them. Brill MyBook. Ordering from Brill. Author Newsletter. Piracy Reporting Form. How to Manage your Online Holdings. Sales Managers and Sales Contacts. Ordering From Brill. LibLynx for Selected Online Resources. Discovery Services. Online User and Order Help. MARC Records. Titles No Longer Published by Brill. Latest Key Figures. Latest Financial Press Releases and Reports. Annual General Meeting of Shareholders.
Share Information. Specialty Products. And all he did was tell his brothers, probably so they could help and cover him up, which is what they did--very respectfully I might add, walking backwards and covering him up in such a way that they didn't even see his naked body.
And what's the big deal about seeing someone naked anyway? We are like this today in our culture as well, and it all started when Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge.
That's when they started to feel shame. The answers below are specifically related to this question about the cultural issues surrounding nakedness and sexuality. If you are interested in the way Genesis 9 has been used to justify racism and slavery, you can find those responses under a related question here.
Well, this is a complex narrative about which many articles and books have been written. To try to summarize these findings would be impossible here so a short answer is in order.
First, beware of the legendary- ideological nature of the narrative. This foundational tale would then explain to the readers the reason why the Canaanites had to be subjugated: it was because Noah had already cursed them through their ancestor Ham, whom the narrative describes twice as the father of Canaan. It is a map, a blueprint to humanity as these ancient writers understood it. Second, beware of the cultural-symbolic nature of the narrative. All of these things may be implicit in the narrative, though the text is not clear about any of them.
Still, the text mentions that Ham had done something to Noah and here is where the reader can find room for speculation alongside some of the ideas proposed above. In the first place, let us say that modesty, even prudery, and shame at nakedness were very much part of ancient Israelite morality. No doubt this was partly to distinguish ancient Israel sharply from the surrounding peoples and their pagan idolatrous religions, which probably involved a good deal of nakedness and sexual licence, at least in the eyes of the Israelites.
But that prudery applied, not to pre-pubescent children, but especially to adults of a certain social standing, for whom any kind of public nudity gravely compromised their dignity and honor. This can be seen in Exodus , where the priest must not climb up on the stone altar, lest his nakedness be exposed in so doing.
It can also be seen by the many rules and concerns about nakedness in Leviticus 18 and 20, Ezekiel 16 and , etc. In the second place, many Old Testament stories are told in large part to explain why we do and feel certain things today. They are called "aetiological" stories. To take just one of many examples, a child might ask, "Why do we wear clothes? Finally, how does all this apply to Noah and his sons? And so he took his anger out on the son who had actually seen him naked.
So to explain why both the Hamite Egyptians and the Canaanites were accursed as they obviously were, being Israel's sometime enemies , and how the Canaanites were allowed to survive but only as the slaves of the Israelites "hewers of wood and drawers of water" [Joshua , 23, 27] , the ancient author had to tell how the patriarch Noah had cursed both Canaan directly and his father Ham indirectly.
Thus we see how, in very many of these stories, it is not very useful to insist too much on the question of whether or not they are literally true. Rather, we must make allowances for the storyteller's art. For without the great poetic art of those who shaped and re-shaped, told and re-told these stories, generation after generation, these stories would not have survived to our day, no matter how literally true they might have been.
This story is an etiology an origin story that explains why the Israelites were able to take over the land and suppress the Canaanites. Instead, he tells his brothers thereby shaming him.
0コメント