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| Some of the modern-day descendants of Ham. Don't feel bad for them, their grandpa looked at Noah's dick. |
The chapter first, uninterrupted, from the English Standard Version of the Bible.
1 And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.
2 The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea. Into your hand they are delivered.
3 Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything.
4 But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.
5 And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning: from every beast I will require it and from man. From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man.
6 “Whoever sheds the blood of man,
by man shall his blood be shed,
for God made man in his own image.
7 And you, be fruitful and multiply, increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it.”
8 Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him,
9 “Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you,
10 and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the livestock, and every beast of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark; it is for every beast of the earth.
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11 I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.”
12 And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations:
13 I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.
14 When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds,
15 I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh. And the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.
16 When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.”
17 God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.”
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.
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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.
29 All the days of Noah were 950 years, and he died.
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The post-Diluvian world has been shaped, as recounted in the previous few chapters, by the fact that Noah is the new patriarch of a human society that consists of only himself, his wife, his three sons, and their three wives. God helpfully tells these people that all animals will forever be frightened of humans (though this does not appear to be always true; I have never, for instance, seen a shark get spooked by a diver); and though Genesis 7:2 mentions dietary restrictions adopted much later, God's only restriction for Noah and his boys is that they should not eat meat if it still has blood in it.
This line (and others like it that show up later) probably provides an early basis for halal and kosher cooking practices; Jews and Muslims are very serious about their dietary restrictions (the rule about not drinking blood in particular), and so they have (nearly identical) animal slaughtering rules that require that butchered animals be killed (while conscious) with a single knife-cut to their necks. The beasts do not die until they have bled out, several minutes later. As the non-religious food service tradition is to stun or incapacitate an animal to avoid pain, many consider this religious butchering to be needlessly cruel. However, Genesis 9:2 justifies this behavior quite clearly. One imagines from these few verses a full-throated Biblical defense of any number of objectionable things can be mounted, including: animal abuse, puppy-mills, and the fur industry.
One sect of Christians takes the fear of ingesting blood to an extreme: the Jehovah's Witnesses, an
out-there band of prosleytising evangelicals, refuses to accept blood transfusions because of verse 9:4 in Genesis; as the sect interprets this medical procedure as identical to drinking blood, they consider it a direct violation of God's word. Obviously this doctrine is vehemently opposed by doctors and other experts, who have laboriously and painstakingly pointed out the scientific difference, but no matter how many believers die, the Jehoevah's Witnesses remain unmoved.
Perhaps this prohibition on blood drinking is for health reasons, but more likely it's because God seems to get off on the smell of cooking animal flesh, as indicated in Genesis 8:21. The big guy upstairs makes it pretty clear in the first few verses of this chapter that all animals and all plants have been given unto humanity to use as they will. There are no 'unclean animals' or immoral plants in this early narrative; and so, many anti-prohibition advocates point to this section of the Bible to assert that God never wanted man to outlaw cannabis, or coca leaves, or whatever other natural product might be anathema to governments of the day.
Unfortunately, this same verse has been used by believers to justify any number of horrible atrocities committed against animals and the Earth in general. If the Earth is given unto mankind to use and abuse as man sees fit, why should man then worry about being a good caretaker to his environment? God specifically bestowed the world unto man with very few restrictions, and if God had cared about carbon emissions or toxic effluvia, he'd have mentioned it in Genesis! Early Christian conquerors of the Americas cared very little about protecting native animal diversity, and so we had a number of prominent species that do not survive long after the Colombian Exchange.
Another curious fact is exposed in Genesis 9:6, where God seems to reveal himself as a staunch supporter of the death penalty. If any man sheds another man's blood, the verse says, his own blood should be shed by man. This opens up a disturbing can of worms, of course. If Man A murders Man B, this Biblical verse requires that Man C murder Man A in exchange. However, the verse does not say that Man C should be exempt from this proscribed punishment (he did kill someone after all), and so one wonders where the path of executioners would end.
More importantly, if we think back to Genesis 4:11-16 (as covered here), we will remember that Cain, the very first murderer on Earth, was not subject to this vengeful declaration. In fact, after murdering his brother Abel, Cain is sent away to a land of his own where he bears his own children and seems to make a decent life for himself. In fact, God specifically declares that no man on Earth shall be permitted to kill Cain despite his crime; if they did, God promises seven-fold vengeance upon them (4:15). The way I see it, either God was not particularly fond of Abel and swept his murder under the rug, or starting with the Noahic Covenant God decided that murder should be considered more of a Big Deal, and thus jacked up the punishment exponentially.
With these few simple rules God establishes his first covenant (a solemn agreement to engage in or refrain from a specified action). In exchange for no murder and no vampirism, God tells man that he promises never to try to destroy all of mankind and the earth by way of flood again. He sets a rainbow in the sky over Noah and tells him that this is the symbol of his covenant; that so long as God sees that rainbow in the sky, he will remember the deal he made with Noah (9:15).
Putting aside the fact that we know the scientific reason that rainbows exist (and they are not suddenly plucked from the sky by the fingers of a remorseful God), one has to wonder why God needs to remind himself about the details of his arrangement with man in the first place. In fact, this entire chapter rubs off a bit of the "all powerful sky God" facade that the deity has cultivated for himself. For one thing, an all-powerful and all-knowing God would have no reason to feel any sort of remorse at all, as he would have known the ultimate result of his actions long before they were ever taken. Second, if our supreme deity is so addled and forgetful that he has to make incredibly unsubtle celestial phenomena into a form of divine post-it note, one wonders how we are supposed to believe his Word, as dispensed to man, is indeed inerrant.
If we put a pin in rainbows and covenants and things for now, we can examine the curious scene that takes place at the end of this chapter, wherein Noah gets incredibly drunk, passes out completely naked, and then sentences a number of his descendants to eternal slavery because their father made fun of him. You see, after 40 (or 150) days of floating around in a boat filled with animal dung, Noah felt he really needed to take the edge off. He planted a vineyard, and (presumably some months later) drank the wine that he produced from it until he was well and truly drunk.
In such a state he passed out, with none of his clothes on, in his tent. Well, one of his sons (Ham) thought this was hilarious, and so he snuck up on the tent and saw his dad lying there, stone-drunk in the nude, and he laughed about it. Like anyone who has discovered his authoritarian dad in such a compromised position, Ham immediately ran to tell his brothers to come share in Noah's hilarious humiliation. The brothers, Japheth and Shem, were much more prudish about the whole episode, and they immediately moved to cover their dad up, clearly neither of them amused.
When Noah wakes up with this covering, he knows something is up and it doesn't take long for him to find out what his son Ham has done. Noah is furious, and he declares that Ham's son (not Ham himself, but Ham's son and Noah's grandson, Canaan) shall be cursed for eternity, to act as a servant of servants, to forever be a slave to his uncles, Japheth and Shem.
It is by this Biblical verse that all of 'the descendants of Ham' were for many centuries believed to have been cursed to slavery and servitude by the very will of God himself. Even as early as the second century CE, Judeo-Christian commentators had associated the 'Children of Ham' with the race of peoples that dwelled on the African continent. Mar Ephrem the Syrian (a Christian scholar and Syriac Orthodox saint) wrote in the fourth century: "When Noah awoke and was told what [Ham] did. . .Noah said, ‘Cursed be Canaan and may God make his face black,’ and immediately the face of Canaan changed; so did of his father Ham, and their white faces became black and dark and their color changed." For literal centuries, Christians nigh-universally accepted this interpretation as absolute moral justification for both the slave trade and for the mistreatment of African slaves under their power.
Hilariously, the Mormon Church taught for many decades that black people could be turned white through prayer and virtuous living. It was for that reason that Mormons did not permit black people to serve as priests in their order until 1978, barely thirty years ago as it currently stands. The Tenth President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Joseph Fielding Smith (who served until 1970) explains the reason for racially-based social discrimination:
"
There is a reason why one man is born black and with other disadvantages, while another is born white with great advantages. The reason is that we once had an estate before we came here, and were obedient; more or less, to the laws that were given us there. Those who were faithful in all things there [pre-existence] received greater blessings here, and those who were not faithful received less. . . . There were no neutrals in the war in Heaven. All took sides either with Christ or with Satan. Every man had his agency there, and men receive rewards here based upon their actions there, just as they will receive rewards hereafter for deeds done in the body. The Negro, evidently, is receiving the reward he merits (Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation, 1:61).
"
What exactly did Ham do that cursed all of his descendants to a life of black-face and an eternity of subjugation? According to Genesis, he merely saw his dad naked and drunk and told his brothers about it, and his father thought this grounds for eternal damnation. There are more gruesome interpretations, of course; some Rabbinic sources claim that Ham sexually abused his drunk father, and thus earned his curse through homosexual and incestuous rape. If this is the case, one wonders why the Bible is not clearer on the subject. One thing to keep in mind, of course, is that at the time of the Deluge Noah was already well over 600-years old. One can't imagine a situation wherein his son might think that this made him sexually attractive, but there were admittedly very few people on the Earth at the time... Beggars can't be choosers, am I right? We do know, curiously, that Ham had a wife - we are told repeatedly in previous chapters. If Ham chose to rape his centuries-old blacked-out father instead of sleeping with his wife, it is hard to fathom how charming she must have been.
In any case, at the end of this chapter we have a society reborn. Noah and his six-hundred year old wife rule over a land populated by his sons and grandsons. One of these three sons, Ham, has been cursed (along with all of his descendants) to forever be slave to the other two sons, Japheth and Shem. We are told this happy situation continues until Noah finally dies, at the age of 950, 350 years after the flood ended.
This line (and others like it that show up later) probably provides an early basis for halal and kosher cooking practices; Jews and Muslims are very serious about their dietary restrictions (the rule about not drinking blood in particular), and so they have (nearly identical) animal slaughtering rules that require that butchered animals be killed (while conscious) with a single knife-cut to their necks. The beasts do not die until they have bled out, several minutes later. As the non-religious food service tradition is to stun or incapacitate an animal to avoid pain, many consider this religious butchering to be needlessly cruel. However, Genesis 9:2 justifies this behavior quite clearly. One imagines from these few verses a full-throated Biblical defense of any number of objectionable things can be mounted, including: animal abuse, puppy-mills, and the fur industry.
One sect of Christians takes the fear of ingesting blood to an extreme: the Jehovah's Witnesses, an
out-there band of prosleytising evangelicals, refuses to accept blood transfusions because of verse 9:4 in Genesis; as the sect interprets this medical procedure as identical to drinking blood, they consider it a direct violation of God's word. Obviously this doctrine is vehemently opposed by doctors and other experts, who have laboriously and painstakingly pointed out the scientific difference, but no matter how many believers die, the Jehoevah's Witnesses remain unmoved.
Perhaps this prohibition on blood drinking is for health reasons, but more likely it's because God seems to get off on the smell of cooking animal flesh, as indicated in Genesis 8:21. The big guy upstairs makes it pretty clear in the first few verses of this chapter that all animals and all plants have been given unto humanity to use as they will. There are no 'unclean animals' or immoral plants in this early narrative; and so, many anti-prohibition advocates point to this section of the Bible to assert that God never wanted man to outlaw cannabis, or coca leaves, or whatever other natural product might be anathema to governments of the day.
Unfortunately, this same verse has been used by believers to justify any number of horrible atrocities committed against animals and the Earth in general. If the Earth is given unto mankind to use and abuse as man sees fit, why should man then worry about being a good caretaker to his environment? God specifically bestowed the world unto man with very few restrictions, and if God had cared about carbon emissions or toxic effluvia, he'd have mentioned it in Genesis! Early Christian conquerors of the Americas cared very little about protecting native animal diversity, and so we had a number of prominent species that do not survive long after the Colombian Exchange.
Another curious fact is exposed in Genesis 9:6, where God seems to reveal himself as a staunch supporter of the death penalty. If any man sheds another man's blood, the verse says, his own blood should be shed by man. This opens up a disturbing can of worms, of course. If Man A murders Man B, this Biblical verse requires that Man C murder Man A in exchange. However, the verse does not say that Man C should be exempt from this proscribed punishment (he did kill someone after all), and so one wonders where the path of executioners would end.
More importantly, if we think back to Genesis 4:11-16 (as covered here), we will remember that Cain, the very first murderer on Earth, was not subject to this vengeful declaration. In fact, after murdering his brother Abel, Cain is sent away to a land of his own where he bears his own children and seems to make a decent life for himself. In fact, God specifically declares that no man on Earth shall be permitted to kill Cain despite his crime; if they did, God promises seven-fold vengeance upon them (4:15). The way I see it, either God was not particularly fond of Abel and swept his murder under the rug, or starting with the Noahic Covenant God decided that murder should be considered more of a Big Deal, and thus jacked up the punishment exponentially.
With these few simple rules God establishes his first covenant (a solemn agreement to engage in or refrain from a specified action). In exchange for no murder and no vampirism, God tells man that he promises never to try to destroy all of mankind and the earth by way of flood again. He sets a rainbow in the sky over Noah and tells him that this is the symbol of his covenant; that so long as God sees that rainbow in the sky, he will remember the deal he made with Noah (9:15).
Putting aside the fact that we know the scientific reason that rainbows exist (and they are not suddenly plucked from the sky by the fingers of a remorseful God), one has to wonder why God needs to remind himself about the details of his arrangement with man in the first place. In fact, this entire chapter rubs off a bit of the "all powerful sky God" facade that the deity has cultivated for himself. For one thing, an all-powerful and all-knowing God would have no reason to feel any sort of remorse at all, as he would have known the ultimate result of his actions long before they were ever taken. Second, if our supreme deity is so addled and forgetful that he has to make incredibly unsubtle celestial phenomena into a form of divine post-it note, one wonders how we are supposed to believe his Word, as dispensed to man, is indeed inerrant.
If we put a pin in rainbows and covenants and things for now, we can examine the curious scene that takes place at the end of this chapter, wherein Noah gets incredibly drunk, passes out completely naked, and then sentences a number of his descendants to eternal slavery because their father made fun of him. You see, after 40 (or 150) days of floating around in a boat filled with animal dung, Noah felt he really needed to take the edge off. He planted a vineyard, and (presumably some months later) drank the wine that he produced from it until he was well and truly drunk.
In such a state he passed out, with none of his clothes on, in his tent. Well, one of his sons (Ham) thought this was hilarious, and so he snuck up on the tent and saw his dad lying there, stone-drunk in the nude, and he laughed about it. Like anyone who has discovered his authoritarian dad in such a compromised position, Ham immediately ran to tell his brothers to come share in Noah's hilarious humiliation. The brothers, Japheth and Shem, were much more prudish about the whole episode, and they immediately moved to cover their dad up, clearly neither of them amused.
When Noah wakes up with this covering, he knows something is up and it doesn't take long for him to find out what his son Ham has done. Noah is furious, and he declares that Ham's son (not Ham himself, but Ham's son and Noah's grandson, Canaan) shall be cursed for eternity, to act as a servant of servants, to forever be a slave to his uncles, Japheth and Shem.
It is by this Biblical verse that all of 'the descendants of Ham' were for many centuries believed to have been cursed to slavery and servitude by the very will of God himself. Even as early as the second century CE, Judeo-Christian commentators had associated the 'Children of Ham' with the race of peoples that dwelled on the African continent. Mar Ephrem the Syrian (a Christian scholar and Syriac Orthodox saint) wrote in the fourth century: "When Noah awoke and was told what [Ham] did. . .Noah said, ‘Cursed be Canaan and may God make his face black,’ and immediately the face of Canaan changed; so did of his father Ham, and their white faces became black and dark and their color changed." For literal centuries, Christians nigh-universally accepted this interpretation as absolute moral justification for both the slave trade and for the mistreatment of African slaves under their power.
Hilariously, the Mormon Church taught for many decades that black people could be turned white through prayer and virtuous living. It was for that reason that Mormons did not permit black people to serve as priests in their order until 1978, barely thirty years ago as it currently stands. The Tenth President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Joseph Fielding Smith (who served until 1970) explains the reason for racially-based social discrimination:
"
There is a reason why one man is born black and with other disadvantages, while another is born white with great advantages. The reason is that we once had an estate before we came here, and were obedient; more or less, to the laws that were given us there. Those who were faithful in all things there [pre-existence] received greater blessings here, and those who were not faithful received less. . . . There were no neutrals in the war in Heaven. All took sides either with Christ or with Satan. Every man had his agency there, and men receive rewards here based upon their actions there, just as they will receive rewards hereafter for deeds done in the body. The Negro, evidently, is receiving the reward he merits (Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation, 1:61).
"
What exactly did Ham do that cursed all of his descendants to a life of black-face and an eternity of subjugation? According to Genesis, he merely saw his dad naked and drunk and told his brothers about it, and his father thought this grounds for eternal damnation. There are more gruesome interpretations, of course; some Rabbinic sources claim that Ham sexually abused his drunk father, and thus earned his curse through homosexual and incestuous rape. If this is the case, one wonders why the Bible is not clearer on the subject. One thing to keep in mind, of course, is that at the time of the Deluge Noah was already well over 600-years old. One can't imagine a situation wherein his son might think that this made him sexually attractive, but there were admittedly very few people on the Earth at the time... Beggars can't be choosers, am I right? We do know, curiously, that Ham had a wife - we are told repeatedly in previous chapters. If Ham chose to rape his centuries-old blacked-out father instead of sleeping with his wife, it is hard to fathom how charming she must have been.
In any case, at the end of this chapter we have a society reborn. Noah and his six-hundred year old wife rule over a land populated by his sons and grandsons. One of these three sons, Ham, has been cursed (along with all of his descendants) to forever be slave to the other two sons, Japheth and Shem. We are told this happy situation continues until Noah finally dies, at the age of 950, 350 years after the flood ended.
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