Genesis 9:18-29--Canaan is Cursed

Genesis 9:18-29
World English Bible
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18 The sons of Noah who went out from the ship were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Ham is the father of Canaan. 19 These three were the sons of Noah, and from these the whole earth was populated.

20 Noah began to be a farmer, and planted a vineyard. 21 He drank of the wine and got drunk. He was uncovered within his tent. 22 Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brothers outside. 23 Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it on both their shoulders, went in backwards, and covered the nakedness of their father. Their faces were backwards, and they didn’t see their father’s nakedness. 24 Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his youngest son had done to him. 25 He said,

“Canaan is cursed.
    He will be a servant of servants to his brothers.”

26 He said,

“Blessed be Yahweh, the God of Shem.
    Let Canaan be his servant.
27 May God enlarge Japheth.
    Let him dwell in the tents of Shem.
    Let Canaan be his servant.”

28 Noah lived three hundred fifty years after the flood. 29 All the days of Noah were nine hundred fifty years, and then he died.

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The LORD is going to give us a preview of where all the trouble started with the Canaanites, and how He in his omniscience cursed the Canaanites all the way back in the days of Noah.  Remember that the people of Israel are receiving this from Moses after their Exodus from Egypt (we'll get to that in the next book) as they are getting ready to go into Canaan and take possession of it as the Land that was promised to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and their descendants as an eternal portion and inheritance from the LORD (more on the Abrahamic Covenant later, but if you want to hear about it now, you can check out the video for Gospel Foundations, Volume 1, Session 3 here (free website registration required, then Request Access to the Gospel Foundations course for free on ​www.danielwestfall.com/ ).

Noah began to farm the land he lived on after the flood and planted a vineyard to grow grapes so that he could make wine.  It seems that Noah drank to excess (he was not perfect) and became drunk and passed out in his tent.  Whatever he was doing before he passed out, he was not just passed out, but also naked.  Ham, the father of Canaan (and many other nations, but this story is specifically about a curse that is going to be put on Canaan) saw his father's nakedness and instead of being ashamed by it, he laughed at it and told his brothers because he thought they would laugh at it too.  This brothers had more honor for their father than Ham did, and when they heard about it, they took a blanket and walking backwards into the tent so as to not look on their father's nakedness, covered their father with the blanket, therefore covering his shame.  Remember that word for "cover" is the same word as "atone" so in a symbolic way, they made atonement for him.

When Noah awoke, he knew what Ham had done (some think this points to some kind of sexual assault that happened, but I see no evidence of that in the text.  I think it is more likely that Shem and Japheth told him or that the Spirit revealed it to him, as Noah was a prophet).  It is interesting though that Noah did not curse Ham and all of his descendants, for it was Ham that sinned.  Instead, he only cursed one of Ham's sons, specifically Canaan, his oldest son.  The Canaanites were condemned to always be servants, specifically to the descendants of Shem and Japheth.  This may explain the mentality of the Israelites to only partially obey the LORD and instead of killing or permanently exiling the Canaanites from the Land, they thought it appropriate to take the Canavanines as their servants (that was a mistake as it would lead to relationships between Israelite men and Canaanite women and the women and children that would pull God's people into all kinds of idolatry and sexual deviancy and other abominable activities).

God blessed Shem and Japheth and all of their descendants.  Canaan was specifically going to serve Shem and his descendants (Abraham will be the next descendant of Shem that we talk about and this is where we get the word Semitic and Semite from--from the name of Shem).  Japheth and his descendants were also blessed for as long as they allied themselves with Shem.  It seems like Shem is the one really receiving the blessing here (a foretaste of the Abrahamic Covenant) and Japheth is going to have that blessing spill over onto him as long as he remains friends with Shem.  So, we understand at some level that God's plan is for His promises to be fulfilled to Shem with a supporting role from Japheth, but Ham and specifically the Canaanites will be the antagonists.  There are still wars being fought today over these relationships that stem back to this passage in the book of Genesis.  The world may not understand why it seems like certain people are always at war with one another, but if we understand the book of Genesis, we have  a better understanding that there is a sibling rivalry aspect, but there is also a spiritual dimension which we saw played out in the response of the sons to their father's sin.

Noah lived for another 250 years after the flood and died at the age of 950 years old.    The story of Noah and the Flood comes to an end here, but we still need to get from Noah to the next main character in the story, Abraham, and we'll do that in Genesis 10 with The Table of Nations.  Understanding which families certain nations belong to and how they fit into the structure of Noah's blessings and curses from this chapter help us understand things going forward.  Next time, we'll take a look at Psalm 53 which starts with, "The fool says in his heart 'There is no God.'" It will describe no only functional atheists who make a positional statement of "there is no God," but also functional atheists who live like there is no God regardless of what they say with their lips--they have no fear of God and do not obey Him.  This is also the Psalm that Romans cites when it says, "There is no one who does good, no, not one."