INEBRIATED NOAH

Why on earth didn’t the author of these chapters take a blue pencil to this nasty little paragraph? After the salvation story of the Flood, and the reassurance of the divine promise given in the rainbow, why come back now to this story of drunken stupor, sexual immodesty, family embarrassment and the curse against Canaan? It really seems to lower the tone.

Some of the allegorical interpretations of the early church have tried to rescue the story, and sanctify it, with the suggestions that Noah is here a type of Christ. The Holy Trinity is figured in the farmer who prepares the soil. Christ drinks the cup of salvation; his nakedness is his self-exposure to evil on the cross; Ham stands for the unbelieving Jews who deride and mock him, Shem and Japheth are the converts to Christ, Jew and Gentile, on which God now builds his church, the dwelling place of his Spirit.

Alternatively, the paragraph was used by some as a moral lesson, to guide subordinate clergy in their obligation to ‘cover over’ the faults of their bishops! However important that may be, it is surely pressing this particular text a little far!

We need, first, to look at the text as it stands.

Verses 18–19 link the story of Noah with the ongoing life of his sons, from whom the whole earth was peopled. The ‘developing story’ formula comes again in chapter 10:1. We are being led into an account of the spread of civilization throughout the earth after the Flood. And it is in that context that this episode with Noah is placed.

Noah, we are told, was a tiller of the soil. There are unmistakable echoes of Adam in the Garden in Genesis 2:15. After the Flood, civilization has to be rebuilt. Noah planted a vineyard. There is nothing particularly wrong with wine; indeed some biblical authors recognize that wine may ‘gladden the heart of man’—and is to be received as a gift from the Creator. However, even in the world after the Flood—as we have seen several times before—life is lived in tension. What is given as a blessing can become a source of temptation. The vine which Noah planted eventually takes control of him. Even the man of faith can be overtaken by temptations which become too strong to handle.

It seems clear from this text that Noah was lured into the immodesty of nakedness—often regarded as a disgrace and source of shame in the Bible. The Noah who walked with God, who did all that the Lord commanded him concerning the ark, who trusted the Lord in faithful obedience when all around was disorder, who offered the burnt offering of consecration, and who received the Lord’s covenanted promise—this God-fearing man is now described as a drunk lying uncovered in his tent. Many commentators have thought that the picture is so incongruous that it must come from another hand. But could it not be that it is precisely the incongruity that is important for us to notice? We were reminded in Genesis 8:21 that even after the Flood ‘the imagination of man’s heart is evil’. God has saved Noah and his family, but salvation is not the same as transformation. People of faith still fall into sin. To be declared in baptism to be a member of the Christian community is not a guarantee of instant holiness, it is but the beginning of a pilgrimage journey of sanctification and growth. The life of faithful obedience has its pitfalls. The fall of Noah is another story which engages with us all. And the chapter ends with a reminder that he, too, was mortal! (9:29).

But whatever we say of Noah, it seems that the major problem lies with his son Ham. In contrast to the modest response of Shem and Japheth, Ham is pictured as dishonoring his father presumably by impurely looking at his father’s nakedness, by doing we know not what, and then by broadcasting the indecency around. In the ancient world, honoring one’s parents is one of the highest virtues, and Ham, it appears both from his brothers’ response, and from Noah’s own reaction, had violated another aspect of the divine order.

But we need to move beyond the text as we have it to our prior question: Why was it important that this paragraph was included in the edition of Genesis which we now have? What message did this incident carry for the people of God?

Perhaps our answer lies in the way Canaan, the son of Ham, is cursed for Ham’s sin (9:25–27). For, according to many parts of the Old Testament, the Canaanites are one of the greatest sources of temptation to the people of God. The sexual perversions of the Canaanites, often associated with their religious drunken orgies, were held up to the people of God as behaviours to avoid. ‘You shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan,’ says Leviticus 18:3—and then follows a list of sexual malpractices which are not consistent with the life of the people of Yahweh.

By contrast, Noah blesses God for being the God of Shem, and prays that Japheth may dwell in his tents. These verses, full of difficulties, their precise meaning obscure, may possibly indicate that Noah is looking forward to a time when the people of Japheth (perhaps the Philistines?) will dwell in the tents of Shem, within the land of Canaan. Is there a hint here that despite all the comings and goings of the nations (described in Gn. 10), God still has his hand on world history—and that one day even ‘outsiders’ will be welcomed among the people of God? What is clear, though, is that Genesis 9 is telling us in this vivid story of how the father of the Canaanites was guilty of ungodly behaviour—towards his own father. It serves as a reminder to the people of God how easy it is to be led astray from the patterns of life appropriate to covenant people. Even the ‘herald of righteousness’ is not immune to temptation. The sins of one (Ham) can set the course for succeeding generations (Canaan). And beware, people of God, lest you, too, be led astray by the Canaanites at your door.