Genesis 9:18-28--Noah's Descendants

​Genesis 9:18-28 English Standard Version (ESV)
LISTEN:  https://www.biblegateway.com/audio/mclean/esv/Gen.9.18-Gen.9.28

Noah's Descendants
18 The sons of Noah who went forth from the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. (Ham was the father of Canaan.) 19 These three were the sons of Noah, and from these the people of the whole earth were dispersed.

20 Noah began to be a man of the soil, and he planted a vineyard. 21 He drank of the wine and became drunk and lay uncovered in his tent. 22 And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brothers outside. 23 Then Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it on both their shoulders, and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father. Their faces were turned backward, and they did not see their father's nakedness. 24 When Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done to him, 25 he said,

“Cursed be Canaan;
    a servant of servants shall he be to his brothers.”

26 He also said,

“Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem;
    and let Canaan be his servant.
27 May God enlarge Japheth,
    and let him dwell in the tents of Shem,
    and let Canaan be his servant.”
​
28 After the flood Noah lived 350 years.

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We're nearing the end of the story of Noah, and are starting to transition to the story of his sons as they begin to obey the command to be fruitful and multiply and to fill the earth.  We see that after the flood that Noah went back to farming and planted a vineyard.  As much as we see that Noah was a righteous man, we see that even a man like him can and will sin as he drinks to the point of getting drunk and falls asleep while naked.  Some people try to say that maybe fermentation didn't exist before the flood and Noah didn't know the alcoholic content of the wine.  I don't believe that.  You have to intentionally make wine, otherwise you get vinegar.  Noah seemed to know what he was doing and drank in excess and passed out naked inside the tent.

We don't know why Ham needed to go into his father's tent, but he didn't seem to be embarrassed by what was going on and instead went and told his brothers about it, thinking that they would want to see for themselves and maybe get a good laugh at their father's expense.  Shem and Japheth instead did the right thing and took a garment (probably a cloak or something large enough like it to serve as a suitable covering) and walked in backwards so as to not look on their father's nakedness and covered him.  We'll actually see this codified into the Mosaic Law later, but even then these sons knew that it was wrong to look on the nakedness of their father.

We aren't told how, but somehow when Noah woke up, he knew what had happened and who the guilty party was--perhaps it was just one of those things where Ham was the "black sheep" in the family and was the one that was always guilty, or maybe Noah had been more awake than Ham thought or maybe the Lord revealed the truth to Noah.  No matter, Noah then curses the sons of Ham (he doesn't even mention Ham by name, but instead mentions his son Canaan) and blesses Shem and Japheth saying that the descendants of Cannan will one day serve the descendants of Shem and that God would enlarge the land of Japheth and that he would continue to dwell among his brother Shem and that Canaan (and his descendants) would serve both of them (and their descendants).

This seems like quite an odd set of blessings and curses and prophecies, but we are going to understand it more fully when we see the genealogy of the nations in the next chapter.  We end the story of Noah here with a statement that says that Noah lived another 350 years after the Flood.  Just for refresher, we learned in the earlier genealogy that Noah was 500 years old and 600 when the Flood happened and that he lived another 350 years after this giving him 950 years of life here on the earth.  No one after him would come close to that, but this means that he would have been very close to being alive around the time the Abram was born (we'll get there in chapter 11).

Let's talk for a second about what this is not (and I'm sorry that I even have to talk about this).  This is NOT talking about certain races of people that will be slaves to other races of people.  Certain people used this passage among others to justify the unbiblical practices of slave trading and racism.  We will probably get a better idea what is going on here when we see the descendants of Canaan, though most with a passing knowledge of the Old Testament probably have an idea of where this is going in the book of Joshua and the rest of the Old Testament.  Let's just say the rest of the sons of Ham aren't so squeaky-clean either though and you'll notice quite a few other names in that list that should start setting off some alarm bells for you.  I'll do my best to point out some of the more important names in the next blog, just don't buy into any of the garbage that's out there tries to say that the curse upon Cannan is somehow a curse on all people with dark complexions.  That is hot garbage and a lie from the pit of hell.  We will see over and over and over again in the Old Testament that the sin of one man can affect the trajectory of the rest of history, especially for his descendants.  This is what's going on here.  This incident and the following genealogies do give us some insight into the different people groups that we see in the Old Testament and why some groups seem to be fighting against others (mostly the sons of Shem fighting with the sons of Ham).  Was it really over this event?  Probably not exactly, but this family was split and learned to hate each other instead of love each other and at some point it seems that the descendants have been fighting each other and hating one another because that's all they know how to do, even if they don't really know why they are fighting.