Why this story matters

(commentary on Genesis 6-9)

(Page 4 of 4)

Noah falls off the wagon

At the end of the story, God's righteous hero gets drunk and passes out naked in his tent: “Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded to plant a vineyard. When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent” (Gen. 9:20). This is a man the Bible calls perfect in his generation. It's not known for sure if he drank much before the flood, but he appears to be no stranger to wine. After all, he even knows how to make it. It's hard to imagine this would have been his first time. To be fair to Noah, the decision to drink again may be a reaction to the new world that he has inherited. Initially, it would have been desolate, lonely, and filled everywhere with the rotting carcasses of humans and animals. He may have been drinking to drown his sorrows. At any rate, on the morning of the day after his alcoholic binge, a strange incident takes place.

The curse of the Canaanites

Noah’s son, Ham, discovers his father's unconscious naked body and apparently sins terribly by going to tell his brothers. The brothers take a blanket, walk backwards so as not to see anything, and place it on their father (Gen. 9:22). When Noah wakes and discovers what happened, he issues a curse. But, strangely, the curse is not so much upon Ham, but more upon his son Canaan: "When Noah awoke from his wine and found out what his youngest son had done to him, he said, 'Cursed be Canaan! The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers'” (Gen. 9:25). But why is Ham’s son cursed when he didn’t do anything? The great historical novelist Robert Graves suggests that, “The myth is told to justify Hebrew enslavement of Canaanites" (Hebrew Myths, Anchor, 1989, p.122). Now that sounds a lot more plausible than most of the Bible flood myth.

Conclusion

It's reasonable to ask if all this death and destruction was even worth it. Did it work? Did it get rid of the corruption and violence? Even a cursory reading of events following the flood shows that the new world quickly became corrupt and violent again. So little or nothing was really achieved by this divinely directed global catastrophe. As folklore, it makes some sense. As history, it makes no sense at all.

END OF COMMENTARY

© IllustratedBibleStories.ca