Curse on Canaan – Genesis 9:18-29

Attempts have been made to excuse Noah’s drunkenness.  Some have suggested that the new conditions of the earth (the absence of the water canopy that some have untenably suggested protected earth from the sun) led to greater alcohol content through fermentation.  Others have suggested that either Noah was depressed over the new responsibilities and pressures of life post-flood, or that he was more susceptible to drunkenness because of his old age, or that he was careless with and unaccustomed to the abundance of wine he had produced.  The Bible doesn’t say one way or another, but it does elsewhere hold up drunkenness as a sin (Ephesians 5:18).

[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. [29] All the days of Noah were 950 years, and he died. (Genesis 9:18–29, ESV)

God has given Noah and family the same mandate He gave Adam and Eve:  be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.  Now, through Noah’s sons the whole earth is dispersed, the whole world is to be filled.  God wants man’s dominion and subduing of the earth to be total.

But in this filling of the earth there will be conflict and layers of blessing and cursing.  With Noah’s drunkenness there comes an occasion for Ham to suggest a violation of the mandate.  Observing his father’s nakedness (and perhaps his mother’s, as well), Ham may have suggested to his brothers an inappropriate relationship with their mother as a means of being fruitful.  At the least he was unprotective of his father’s nakedness and dignity.  Shem and Japheth are protective.  So Noah curses Ham’s son, Canaan (and, we may presume Ham, though Moses does not deem it necessary to spell that out).  Canaan is to become a servant of Shem (who will later produce Abraham and the Israelites, who, as Moses writes, are on their way to Canaan to dispossess the Canaanites).  Japheth too will have some submission to Shem that is not spelled out, but is to be enlarged and blessed as a people.

A clear hierarchy is anticipated in this pronouncement by Noah.  The book of Genesis will begin to delineate the generations of these three sons of Noah, the foundations of all the nations on the earth.  The disbursement of the nations will be explained in chapter 11, but first the nations will be generally, not exhaustively, described in chapter 10.