24 When Noah awoke from his wine and found out what his youngest son had done to him,
This is the STUPIDEST thing I have read in a long time
The Term “Uncovering the nakedness of your father” in Leviticus refers specifically to the prohibition of incest.
So if one interprets Scripture WITH Scripture, that would be the most probable explanation.
Even though the Torah had not yet been given in the time of Noah, there were still some things that were so reprehensible that people KNEW they were wrong, even without the Law.
This is an example of why I tend to avoid taking the Bible literally in its every aspect. The ‘literal’ meaning of some of the Old Testament is possibly lost to us as there are inevitably metaphors in use in the text that had meaning in their time but not in ours.
“Saw the nakedness” may well have been one of those metaphors or else it may have simply been a tribal taboo to see a naked elder. In any case, Ham did something wrong and he suffered for it. What he did will remain a mystery for the ages and I’m content to accept that and move on.
does anything in the scripture support those theories.... NO
so, the answer is no.
It goes along with who is your neighbor. Ham was not the neighbor to love as yourself. Cannan accepted the legacy and inheritence of his father, in his custody, thus the curse.
When it comes to unclear scriptures, it seems to me that GOD KNOWS, and that is fine with me. I do not attempt to figure or guess about it.
If God wants it to be cleared then it will be so. MOO
Interesting. So “uncovering his father’s nakedness” is taken to be “supplanting his father’s authority with his father’s wife”.
I kind of wish that story wasn’t included in the Bible. It kind of ends the heroic story of Noah and his family on a rather sour note.
Dumb.
Today I tend to think of Ham’s counterparts as either dreadfully opposed to bacon or gleeful over sexual immorality or both.
Forget all the sexual molestation incest theories. There is a simpler explanation.
Old Testament priests and prophets had priestly garbs. Like Josephs Coat of Many “colors” is more correctly translated cots of many patterns/symbols. Symbolic clothes and garments are found throughout the Old Testament to indicate authority from God. Joseph’s brothers were mad because his dad passed on the priestly robes to the younger son instead of rightful older. (And naively he bragged about ruling them in his dreams).
Same with Noah. He wore the priestly robes of a prophet. Ham took them unto himself, taking the symbol of Noah’s priesthood authority. Not his actual authority of course but Ham thought he could usurp his dad and rule over his siblings apparently. Noah woke and cursed Ham’s descendants to not hold the priesthood.
Incidentally, it was Ham’s daughter Egytus who discovered Egypt. The religion of their descendants and the pharaohs and their tombs have many biblical and Christian temple parallels. So even though they didn’t have the priesthood or authority they tried to recreate some of the symbols. A fallen pattern of the true priesthood.
Weird stuff. Occam’s Razor applies here like everywhere else in the Bible.
The underlying Hebrew of the passage reads far different than the modern translations. Ham saw his father nude, went out and bragged to his brothers that he’d seen his father nude, his brothers covered their father’s nakedness in a respectful manner, Noah woke up and cursed Canaan because the sins of the father at that time were visited on the sons unto several generations:
Exo 34:7 Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.
Ham saw his fathers nakedness, Noah cursed Canaan which could mean that he was the culprit that uncovered Noah.
24- So Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done to him, Since Ham was not the younger son but next to the oldest it could be that he was talking about Canaan.
Most likely just a prank and nothing more.
18 And the sons of Noah, that went forth of the ark, were Shem, and Ham, and Japheth: and Ham is the father of Canaan.
19 These are the three sons of Noah: and of them was the whole earth overspread.
20 And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard:
21 And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent.
22 And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without.
When you look at the severity of the curse placed upon Canaan, Ham’s son, whatever Ham, or Canaan, had done, it must have been especially perverse. It was no misdemeanor.
Since the curse was upon Canaan, I think a clue would be the Canaanites. Abraham made his servant swear that he not take a wife for Isaak from among the Canaanites, but from his kindred, the Shemites, Gen. 24:1-4. Likewise, Jacob, Gen. 28:1,2.
The Canaanites were so wicked in God’s eyes, that when the Israelites under Joshua went into the land of the Canaanites, they were told to kill ‘em all, men, women, and children.
Halley’s Bible Handbook, p. 166, 167, says that the land of Canaan was Sodom and Gomorrah “on a national scale.” (Both - the Sodomites and Canaanites - being Hamites and children of Noah’s curse.) Halley says they were idolators of the worst kind worshiping Baal and Ashtoreth their female goddess.
They practiced abortion on a grand scale, sacrificing their children. To archaelogists, it was the sexual perversion of the Canaanites that was the most striking and definitive.
In their “high places” of worship, archealogists...
“found enormous quantities of images of Ashtoreth with rudely exaggerated sex organs. Canaanites worshiped, by immoral indulgence in the presence of their gods; and then, by murdering their first-born children, as a sacrifice to these same gods.”
Halley goes on to say,
“Do we wonder any longer why God commanded Israel to exterminate the Canaanites? Did a civilization of such abominable filth and brutality haven any right longer to exist? Archeologists that dig in the ruins of Canaan wonder that God did not destroy them sooner than he did.”
It thus appears to me, that most posters on this thread attempting to put their finger on the reason for the curse upon Canaaan, are way to skittish. Just look at evidence.
I’m not going to be skittish in what I’m going to say here:
Any people that enacts laws favoring abortion and same sex marriage, are incurring the curse of Canaan upon them. They have put themselves in the same category as Sodom and Gomorrah and the land of Canaan, both incurring the wrath of God.
Those who call themselves of the right, but can’t find in in themselves to make a stand against abortion and the Sodomites, like the Rino’s and libertarians, are placing themselves in God’s crosshairs, no different in God’s eyes than the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the Canaanites.
The curse upon Canaanites, is not about taxes and finance, which so many FReepers think are most important than the cultural issues.
What is interesting is that the Canaanites (later called Phoenicians by the Graeco-Romans) and Egyptians were all Semitic peoples.