A Broader View; or, Here Comes Everybody!

“This tenth chapter [of Genesis] is seemingly barren and appears to serve no purpose. … It is considered full of dead words.”¹ That was Martin Luther's admission about how a lot of people felt about it five centuries ago. And I'm guessing you won't find it too hard to sympathize! I doubt this is anybody's favorite chapter. Nobody's picking their life verse out of Genesis 10. This isn't the place you turn for inspiration or consolation, most likely. It's a long list of names, barely any of which we recognize. It's so tempting to skim it or skip it; let's get on with the good stuff. That's the temptation. Except Paul had to nag us about how “all Scripture is breathed out by God and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16) – and he didn't make an exception here. Luther ended his consideration of this chapter by calling it “a most precious treasure..., a mirror in which to discern what we humans are.”² So... what's it all about?

This chapter of the Bible is so unique it has its own special name: the Table of Nations. Really, this is the first time the word 'nation' even shows up in the Bible; there are no nations, no distinguished ethnicities, that show up in the first nine chapters, but there sure will be after this.³ In my Bible, the word 'nation' shows up 594 times – starting with five here (six in Hebrew) in this chapter. And what makes Genesis 10 unique is that it's basically “a verbal atlas,”⁴ “a sophisticated exercise in world cartography,”⁵ “a kind of ethnic map of the world.”⁶ Using the shape of a genealogy, it's a world map; the names in it are mostly not individuals, they're people groups.

The names in it might seem pretty unfamiliar, and that's no new thing. For millennia, readers of Genesis have been trying to hunt down all the names in this chapter, correlating it to their pictures of the world's peoples.⁷ But now in the twenty-first century, after a couple hundred years of archaeology, we've nearly managed to fully sketch out this Bible altas. The 'sons of Japheth' are peoples, “all Indo-European nations,” who lived north or northwest of Israel, especially in what's now Turkey, Mediterranean islands, and into Europe.⁸ Gomer's the Cimmerians, who lived by the Black Sea; listed under him are Tegarama, a city in east-central Turkey, Riphath (still a mystery), and Ashkenaz, a people otherwise called the Scythians; Magog is the country of Lydia, a rich and powerful people of west Turkey; Madai are the Medes of northern Iran; Javan are the Ionian Greeks of south Turkey, and associated with him are Elishah and the Kittim, all of Cyprus; the Rodanim, of the island of Rhodes; and Tarshish, the distant colony of Tartessos in south Spain; Tubal and Meshech are neighbors in east Turkey, Tabali and Mushki (Mushki is where the famed Midas was a real king); and Tiras is could be a Mediterranean people called the Turscha or even the ancient Turkish city of Troy, of Trojan Horse fame.⁹

Ham is mainly associated with peoples who lived south and southwest, especially in Africa, and his sons are listed from north to south. Cush was a famous people who lived in Ethiopia and Sudan, and the various sons credited to him are all in east Africa or across the Red Sea in southwest Arabia; Mizraim is just Egypt, and of his listed sons, the Naphtuhim and Pathrusim are just the people of north and south Egypt, the Ludim are Lydian mercenaries who fought for Egypt, the Anamim are a North African people west of Egypt, and the Caphtorim are from the island of Crete to Egypt's northwest; Ham's third son Put is further west of Egypt in Libya; and then Canaan covers all the peoples up the east Mediterranean coast, with some being the groups Israel fought for their promised land, like the Jebusites, Amorites, Hivites, and Girgashites, while others lived further north in Lebanon and west Syria, like the cities of Sidon, Arqa, Siyannu, Sumur, Hamath, and the island of Arwad.¹⁰

Finally, Noah's last-listed son Shem covers the peoples who lived east, southeast, and northeast of Israel in different parts of Asia. Elam is the furthest east, and was a prominent people in southwest Iran, later replaced by the Persians; Asshur is, of course, the Assyrians, in north Iraq; nobody's really sure what Lud's doing here; Aram is the Arameans, who lived in different places including much of what we call Syria, though his sons are tougher to pin down; and the delightfully named Arpachshad probably refers to south Iraq, while his descendants through Joktan are almost all tribes, towns, and oases in southern Arabia.¹¹

To the people who lived thousands of years ago, before we had the kinds of maps we use today, that was a big world, full of so many different kinds of people to keep track of; no wonder the Bible sums each bunch up “by their clans, by their languages, in their lands, in their nations” (Genesis 10:20). One ancient Bible retelling of the Bible, with people cast as animals like a cartoon, pictures here “every kind of species: lions, leopards, wolves, dogs, hyenas, wild boars, foxes, conies, pigs, falcons, vultures, kites, eagles, and ravens.”¹² The Bible has its eyes wide open to so many clans with many customs, pursuing diverse ways to express their humanity.

This list has “about seventy members”¹³ – some say that “the peoples listed amount precisely to seventy,” if you count 'em right.¹⁴ Even though some are vast populations and others are single cities, the Jewish rabbis regularly referred to them as “the seventy nations of the world.”¹⁵ And this picture of seventy, hardly a coincidence for being such a round multiple of seven and ten, is “a literary device to convey the notion of the totality of the human race,”¹⁶ revealing “the completeness of God's order.”¹⁷

Now, again, this chapter is a world map as drawn from an Israelite perspective, a “repository of traditional knowledge.”¹⁸ We shouldn't expect to read here about nations Israel didn't already know by name, like peoples in China or England or the New World.¹⁹ For that matter, this chapter was likely revised and edited at several stages to update it in light of Israel's changing contacts with the world.²⁰ Appearance and skin color play zero role in how this table maps the world; instead, it's organized by things like geography, political relationships, and economic ties.²¹ This chapter “attaches equal weight to multiple levels of belonging.”²² So it's really not surprising we have our share of duplicates here – Lydians creeping into all three divisions, Sheba and Havilah showing up in both Ham and Shem, not to mention a bunch that'll later resurface as Abraham's kids. As one bishop said, “if somewhere the name of a people... has been registered doubly..., let no one wonder or doubt.”²³

Okay, so why did God bother to stick this chapter in his Bible? What is it supposed to tell us? Well, remember that “God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth'” (Genesis 9:1). That was just a chapter ago, and “the blessing is in the process of being realized” in chapter 10.²⁴ The blessing is working! All Noah's sons are fruitful; they're multiplying, and the earth is being filled.

Second, “such a table of nations is unique” in the literatures of the ancient world,²⁵ showing off “a universal consciousness not perceived elsewhere” in any other culture,²⁶ except somewhat in ancient Greece.²⁷ Weirdest of all, Israel's table of nations doesn't even name Israel, as if confessing that “Israel appears late on the world stage” and “cannot elevate itself” above other nations.²⁸ This chapter shows off “God's broad concern for all peoples,”²⁹ that he takes “an interest in all people, in their own right.”³⁰ God is “a God whose purposes transcend the particularism of Israel,” and so his scriptures are calling them to transcend it, too.³¹ They cherish this humbling list without their name, a portrait of a world still waiting for them, a gentle reminder to us as well to “appreciate the different people groups of our own time” in their own right, all the peoples of the earth.³²

But each of those nations is listed under the heading of at least one of the sons of Noah, for these are “the clans of the sons of Noah, according to their genealogies, in their nations; and from these the nations spread abroad on earth after the flood” (Genesis 10:32). St. Paul, when he's preaching in Athens, comments that “God made from one every nation of mankind” (Acts 17:26). In saying 'God made,' he's attesting that no nation is a mistake of mortal man, that each has its distinctive dignity, a God-given peoplehood to live out; but in saying 'from one,' he's saying that this wide world of nations, “as diverse and distinct as they might be, had a common origin,”³³ that they “share a common heritage.”³⁴ This chapter's genealogy “conveys relatedness across the entire system,”³⁵ “binding all humanity together” as “children of one father, Noah.”³⁶ And so “brothers remain brothers, even if they choose never to interact,” or worse.³⁷

Ancient genealogies always “made creative use of the past” so as to speak “to a present situation.”³⁸ This chapter is littered with sevens – seven sons and seven grandsons of Japheth, seven total descendants of Cush, seven sons of Mizraim (the Philistines don't count), twelve plus twice-seven children of Shem, a set of four-times-seven genealogy words – but “no sevens in the structuring of the Canaanite genealogy,”³⁹ which is the detailed but disruptive passage “literally at the center of the chapter.”⁴⁰ The chapter orders Noah's sons in increasing circles of contact with Israel,⁴¹ and subtly draws our attention to the thrice-invoked name of Eber.⁴²

This chapter not only mentions all these nations, but focuses on their “lands” (Genesis 10:5, 20, 31); and old Jewish retellings make that a key part of the story. In those retellings, Noah's three sons settle at the base of the mountain, with Japheth facing west, Ham facing south, and Shem facing east.⁴³ As the decades pass and their people begin fighting over space, they divide it “in an evil manner between themselves.”⁴⁴ In response, Noah “divided by lot the land which his three sons would possess,”⁴⁵ putting their deed into writing, “portioning out each part according to an inheritance for each.”⁴⁶ “Noah divided by lot for Japheth and his sons... the whole land of the north in its entirety,” and “for Shem there emerged the second lot” in “the middle of the earth,” and “for Ham there emerged the third share” “toward the south.”⁴⁷ Then “the sons of Noah divided their allotments among their sons” accordingly.⁴⁸ The retellings close the scene with Noah making “them all swear an oath to curse each and every one who desired to seize a portion which did not come in his lot.”⁴⁹

Now, the psalms confess that “the LORD is high above all nations” and “reigns over the nations” (Psalms 113:4; 47:8) – all nations live in “one world governed by God”⁵⁰ – and the proverbs remind us that “the lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD” (Proverbs 16:33). So even if Noah had his sons cast lots, ultimately it was the LORD who “apportioned for each... a territorial possession, specifically establishing the boundaries thereof.”⁵¹ That's what Moses tells us, at least: “the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance..., he fixed the borders of the peoples” (Deuteronomy 32:8), “each group occupying the country that they lit upon and to which God led them, so that every continent was peopled by them.”⁵² That's why St. Paul preached to the Athenians that the very God they “worship as unknown..., who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth,” also “made from one every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined... the boundaries of their dwelling place” (Acts 17:23-26).

So far, so good. But we haven't yet let Moses finish his statement: “When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance and divided the sons of Adam, he fixed the borders of the people according to the sons of God” (Deuteronomy 32:8). Ancient readers understood here that “there are many nations and many people, and they all belong to [God], but over all of them he caused spirits to rule,”⁵³ that the nations should be “handed over to angels” and remain “under them.”⁵⁴ “For by an ancient and divine order, the angels are distributed among the nations,”⁵⁵ “entrusted with the patronage of nations.”⁵⁶ Thus, “in dividing the nations of the entire world, he appointed a leader for each nation,”⁵⁷ “its own patron angel.”⁵⁸ Jews zeroed in on the chief guardian angels of these nations as “seventy shepherds,”⁵⁹ who “bear responsibility for the welfare of the nations of the world.”⁶⁰ This is the Bible's mighty answer to the stories other nations told, where it was the gods who drew lots to divvy up the land among themselves, and whichever people lived there were just an afterthought.⁶¹

So if each nation has its own appointed guiding spirit, why's the world... you know... the way it is? Some Jews speculated that these 'sons of God' were less than faithful, that “those seventy shepherds were... guilty,”⁶² since, like the psalm says, these “sons of the Most High... have neither knowledge nor understanding” of the mysteries of God's plan (Psalm 82:5-6), so they “judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked” (Psalm 82:2). While some Christians countered “that the angels have done their guardianship, and that it is no fault of theirs if other nations wandered off,”⁶³ Jews lamented that “the polluted demons began to lead astray the children of Noah's sons and to lead them to folly and to destroy them.”⁶⁴ They wondered if maybe that was the mystery of God's plan, that “he caused spirits to rule so that he might lead them astray from following him.”⁶⁵

Either way, “when those who dwelt on earth began to multiply, they produced... many nations, and again they began to be more ungodly than were their ancestors.”⁶⁶ That's why the Apostle Paul tells his sad story of how, although they “knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him” (Romans 1:21) – “all the nations that forget God” (Psalm 9:17), living in a state of “separation from the knowledge of God,” leading to a spiritual void that ached to be filled.⁶⁷ For “they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened; claiming to be wise, they became fools” (Romans 1:21-22) and “began to worship creatures.”⁶⁸ In spite of this, Paul reflects that God “allowed the nations to walk in their own ways” (Acts 14:16), and to “set up new ways of life for themselves and new institutions of their choice,” for better or for worse.⁶⁹

The Old Testament tends to think it was for the worse that “the nations have sunk in the pit that they made” (Psalm 9:15). How often we read lines like, “the LORD is enraged against all the nations” (Isaiah 34:2), “the LORD has an indictment against the nations” (Jeremiah 25:31)! He shows Ezekiel a frightful vision about “the land of Magog” and “Meshech and Tubal” (Ezekiel 38:2), with whom are aligned “Persia and Cush and Put..., Gomer and all his hordes..., the house of Togarmah from the uttermost parts of the earth” (Ezekiel 38:5-6), all supported by “Sheba and Dedan and the merchants of Tarshish” (Ezekiel 38:13). “All the nations of the earth will gather against” the people of God (Zechariah 12:3). But it's a trap for them: “In the latter days, I will bring you against my land, that the nations may know me when through you... I vindicate my holiness before their eyes” (Ezekiel 38:16). “A sword shall come upon Egypt, and anguish shall be in Cush... and Put and Lud and all Arabia and Libya” (Ezekiel 30:4-5), “I will send fire on Magog and on those who dwell securely in the coastlands, and they shall know that I am the LORD” (Ezekiel 39:6), “and I will set my glory among the nations, and all the nations shall see my judgment that I have executed” (Ezekiel 39:21).

It's no wonder the Apostle Paul adds a twist to Moses' words, saying that God apportioned nations not just space but time – that he “determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place” (Acts 17:26).⁷⁰ The nations aren't eternal groupings; their boundaries, identities, and their very existence are all “flexible over time.”⁷¹ Peoples and nations die away by catastrophe or demographic collapse, by merger or assimilation. But nations are also born – gradually (Isaiah 66:8), but it does happen. You won't find Americans in this Table of Nations, but here we are. Paul wants us to know that all this is in the hands of God, that in the wisdom of his plan he assigned both a place and a time to every nation, “all to be overturned in divinely appointed times.”⁷²

And yet, Paul says, God's purpose in doing so was “that they should seek God, if perhaps indeed they might feel their way toward him and find him” (Acts 17:27). After all, even as the nations strayed in willful forgetfulness, God “did not leave himself without witness, but did good” to each nation by providing for them (Acts 14:17). The psalmists begged God to reveal himself even more to the nations, “that you way may be known on earth, your salvation among all nations; let the peoples praise you, O God” (Psalm 67:2-3). They pledged themselves to the task: “I will give thanks to you, O LORD, among the peoples; I will sing praises to you among the nations” (Psalm 108:3). And they called on others to join them: “Declare his glory among the nations” (Psalm 96:3), “say among the nations, 'The LORD reigns!'” (Psalm 96:10). They call to the nations directly to “praise the LORD, all nations; extol him, all peoples!” (Psalm 117:1). The early Jewish rabbis noticed that each year, at the Feast of Booths, over seven days God had them sacrifice seventy bulls, plus a seventy-first bull on the eighth day (Numbers 29:12-38). They reasoned that the last bull was for themselves, and with the others Israel was called, as God's priestly nation in the world (Exodus 19:6), to atone for the sins of the other seventy.⁷³

The Old Testament is full of faith that the LORD God “shall inherit all the nations,” not just his chosen portion (Psalm 82:8). For the prophets saw coming a time to “gather all nations” to “come and see my glory,” God says; “I will send survivors to the nations, to Tarshish and Pul and Lud who draw the bow, to Tubal and Javan, to the coastlands far away that have not heard my fame or seen my glory; and they shall declare my glory among the nations” (Isaiah 66:18-19). “To the LORD shall bow down, each in its place, all the lands of the nations” (Zephaniah 2:11). “O LORD..., to you shall the nations come from the ends of the earth and say, 'Our fathers have inherited nothing but lies, worthless things in which there is no profit'” (Jeremiah 16:19). “Many nations shall join themselves to the LORD in that day, and shall be my people” (Zechariah 2:11).

And the prophets knew that it would take a Prince of Peace – “of him shall the nations inquire” (Isaiah 11:10). This Child of Promise, the Servant of the LORD, “will bring forth justice to the nations” (Isaiah 42:1), will be “a light for the nations” (Isaiah 42:6), so that the LORD's “salvation may reach to the end of the earth” (Isaiah 49:6). To that end, during his ministry, not only does Jesus select twelve apostles for the twelve tribes of Israel, but he “appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him, two by two” (Luke 10:1), an advance group “to teach the salvation of all peoples,”⁷⁴ symbolizing ahead of time that “Jesus is sending his representatives into all the known nations of their day.”⁷⁵ These seventy disciples discover that “even the demons are subject to us” in Jesus' name, for he's given them “authority to tread... over all the power of the enemy” (Luke 10:17-19) – the nation-misleading spirits, even the seventy shepherds, are subject to the seventy disciples.

The prophets foretold, though, that this Lord would suffer “by oppression and judgment,” be slaughtered and buried (Isaiah 53:8), even as the wicked cast lots to divide his clothes as if they were the world divided evilly by the nations (Psalm 22:18). But through this, “all the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD” (Psalm 22:27). From his cross, this Savior “shall sprinkle many nations” with his saving blood (Isaiah 52:5), by which he has “ransomed people for God from every tribe... and people and nation” (Revelation 5:9). “And his resting place shall be glorious” (Isaiah 11:10) – because his tomb is empty! Jesus lives, that “repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed to all nations” (Luke 24:47)!

And so “go, therefore,” says he in resurrection splendor, “and disciple all nations,” baptizing and teaching them the ways of the Lord who tears away “the veil that is spread over all nations” (Matthew 28:19-20; Isaiah 25:7). He did not say to preach to some nations, to disciple some nations, to give life to some nations; he said all nations. Before the world is at last redeemed in full, “the gospel must first be proclaimed to all nations” (Mark 13:10), so that the Church which manifests God's omni-national mystery may astound “the rulers and authorities” over nations “in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 3:10) – “and then the end will come” (Matthew 24:24). What that end brings, John has seen and told us: “Behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples..., standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out in a loud voice: 'Salvation belongs to our God who sits on our throne and to the Lamb!' And all the angels were standing around the throne..., and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshipped God, saying: 'Amen!'” (Revelation 7:9-12). Amen, and amen!

In the Tents of Shem

The air hangs heavy as his ending exhalation spirals softly outward. His lungs don't draw another to replace it; his heart beats its last. Father Noah is gone (Genesis 9:29). We've spent so long with the man that it feels nigh impossible. We've walked with him from his birth nearly a millennium ago, or so the Bible pictures, when his father Lamech cradled him with a humble prayer (Genesis 5:29). Noah – may this man of rest bring comfort to the weariness of human hands, struggling against a cursed earth. Noah took his first steps in a hard-scrabble world tainted by evil running out of control, would-be heroes turning tyrant, violence and lawlessness reigning. But Noah, this boy, found favor in the eyes of the LORD God, and faced opposite the world (Genesis 6:1-9). One day, he heard the voice of that God, breaking through the stony heaven to warn of disaster and give him a ridiculous job: to build a boat big enough for the world (Genesis 6:13-21). Setting aside his celibate devotion, he married and raised three sons, who helped him pour all he had into this boat, a shocking and silent witness to the judgment to come (Genesis 6:22). As a herald of righteousness (2 Peter 2:5), Noah held out the prospect of salvation to all and sundry until the rain was falling. And he trusted the LORD to close the door on his kin and their critters (Genesis 7:16).

In all this, Noah presented an advance image of Jesus, building his Church to divine specifications, calling all to enter it, and washing the world with a baptism that drowns sin but ferries the Church to salvation (Genesis 7:1-24). Through the flood, God broke down the first world, unwinding it to its roots; but in remembering Noah, God saw a reason for life to go on. So he blew his Spirit, parted the waters, raised the land with its plants, called forth the birds and beasts and eight straggling souls onto the mountain height. The Lord God had given rest to the ark; now Noah spread a restful aroma heavenward with his worship, and put all to rights, a sabbath to cut the tape on a squeaky-clean creation (Genesis 8:1-22). Like the first people, humanity received again a blessing, against a grant of grace with food to eat, and again a law, one thing withheld: blood (Genesis 9:1-7). God even protected this second world with a covenant and a sign for all to see (Genesis 9:8-17).

Noah's life then wasn't quite two-thirds through yet. At some point in the decades to come, he craved a garden for his new world, so he planted a vineyard. From the grapes he grew, he made a rest-bringing wine – but this fruit, we found, packs a kick to it, and like the Adam before him, it left him naked in his tent (Genesis 9:18-21). Now today, “Noah awoke from his wine” – he sobered up, albeit probably with a hard-won hangover – “and he knew what his young son had done to him” (Genesis 9:24). He had been humiliated by his son Ham, who had infiltrated his tent, gazed at and deconstructed his naked authority, and gone on to spread his shame in the street, as though he were a powerless captive (Genesis 9:22). His other sons, Shem and Japheth, had resisted their brother's tempting song, and had gone out of their way to remedy his indignity by cloaking his nakedness in sightless silence (Genesis 9:23). Yet Noah now needs to reestablish himself as a man of authority.¹ And he'll do so by sitting in judgment on his sons for their actions in the aberrant episode of his apparent abdication.

This is the point, after everything we've been through together, when for the first time we hear Noah break his silence; here begin his first spoken words in scripture.² And it doesn't start out pretty. You have to figure, if we just saw the fall in the garden repeat itself, we're at the part of the replay when God questions Adam and Eve and then starts speaking in curses of judgment. And that's the very first word out of Noah's mouth: “Cursed” (Genesis 9:25). Alas, “the new world is not free from curse.”³ But since Shem and Japheth did what Adam and Eve didn't in resisting temptation, perhaps the curse won't be the last word of the day. “The LORD's curse is on the house of the wicked,” we're told, “but he blesses the dwelling of the righteous” (Proverbs 3:33).

Since Ham played the snakiest of roles, we expect him to get reamed out with the words, “Cursed be Ham.” To our surprise, that's not what Noah says. “Cursed be Canaan,” we hear (Genesis 9:25), having been reminded over and over that “Ham was the father of Canaan” (Genesis 9:18). This surprise twist has been confusing us for two thousand years plus. If Ham's done the crime, why's his kid doing the time? Some readers speculate there was an earlier version of the story with Canaan in Ham's place,⁴ or read between the lines to find Canaan as “a participant in the offense against Noah” somehow.⁵ But as we have our Bible, “no clear wrongdoing great or small has been indicated on his part.”⁶ So why does Noah pick on this baby of the family instead?

Why not Ham directly? Maybe in part “because of the nearness of kin,” because he was just too close to Ham to bear it.⁷ But it might have more to do with how the chapter started, when “God blessed Noah and his sons” (Genesis 9:1). Even in the garden, God never directly cursed Adam or Eve in their person, since he'd blessed them at the start. God later says, “You shall not curse the people [who] are blessed” (Numbers 22:12). So how could Noah dare? “He did not curse Ham, but his son, because God blessed the sons of Noah.”⁸

So as not to contravene God's blessing, Noah punishes more indirectly. Last Sunday, we saw the parallels with a story of David's wife Michal who judges him naked in public, despises him in her heart, and berates him when he comes home from celebrating the LORD's goodness (2 Samuel 6:20). There's a reproductive consequence for the crime.⁹ The last we read of Michal is that “Michal the daughter of Saul had no child to the day of her death” (2 Samuel 6:23). The curse Noah speaks can't make Ham childless – he's already a dad – but he can be “cursed through his one son.”¹⁰ Then “the father is... more deeply saddened at the punishment paid by his son,”¹¹ enduring perhaps “greater anguish” than if the curse had met Ham under his own name.¹²

Ham should have known better. As a father himself several times over, he challenged his father's fatherhood. Canaan, as the youngest and most impressionable, would see that and be profoundly shaped by it. How could Canaan ever respect Ham's fatherhood for its own sake now? Seeing Ham throw tradition out the window, why would Canaan ever deem him trustworthy? Ham has burned down every support for parenting his own son; it's bound to impact Canaan's future life and behavior. Canaan will struggle to ever understand life as other than self-will versus coercion, license versus slavery. All Canaan knows is that his shame is his dad's fault; Noah's words drive a wedge between Ham and Canaan, putting Ham in a position to be just as resented by his son as Noah has been by Ham.¹³ By cursing Canaan, Noah gives Ham as close as possible to what he dished out.

Still, even if we see the logic and maybe the inevitability, we can't help but ask how it's fair to Canaan, that his teeth be set on edge by Daddy Ham's sour grapes (Ezekiel 18:2). But if we step back, we realize that Noah is being, not unaccountably cruel, but unaccountably kind. Canaan isn't being cursed as an individual, but as a stand-in for the Canaanite nations said to come from him. Noah utters this curse and leaves it as a possibility in the hands of God, to be unfolded as his justice sees fit in later history.¹⁴ Until their “iniquity is complete,” God doesn't let Noah's curse touch their lives at all. If they choose not to walk in Ham's ways, then it will never touch them at all (Ezekiel 18:14-17). Ultimately, it's their own later behavior that earns Noah's curse (Leviticus 18:27). It's Canaanite society as Israel actually saw it that's the target of Noah's curse here.¹⁵

Now, that's mighty merciful. Noah could have spoken his curse against Ham – but “had he been cursed, all the sons of Ham... would have been cursed along with Ham,”¹⁶ so “the punishment would have passed to the race as a whole.”¹⁷ And that's exactly what Noah doesn't want. Noah skips over Ham as well as his three oldest sons, choosing only the youngest one whose descendants would earn it. For the rest of the seed of Ham, there's no sword of fate hanging over their heads; “the other descendants of Ham escaped the curse.”¹⁸

And that's really important, because these words of Noah are going to be heavily and heart-breakingly abused to justify horrendous evils – especially here in America, where, through “a single perverseness of interpretation,”¹⁹ many people read the words of this curse as an endorsement of racial supremacy and an institution of slavery. It never ceases to dismay how badly we're able to misread the Bible. Every now and then in the early church, somebody would smooth out the story in retelling, saying that not Canaan but “Ham became a servant of servants for both of his brothers.”²⁰ One eccentric book, over five centuries after the apostles, jumbled things further and identified Africans, Egyptians, and Indians as the cursed offspring of Canaan.²¹ What made things worse is when the story reached the ears of the first Muslims, who – not having Bibles to set the record straight, and getting deeply into slave trading after conquering Africa – pictured all descendants of Ham as black slaves.²² A long season of Islamic rule in Spain left these toxic ideas to leach slowly into Europe in the Middle Ages,²³ so once the slave trade took off, Europeans reinterpreted this verse to explain differences in skin color.²⁴ But it was especially here that Noah's curse became crucial to the quest to justify race-based slavery.²⁵ American defenders of slavery wielded this verse as “a charm to spellbind opposition” which they never left home without.²⁶ One critic called it “the oldest bill of rights slaveholders are wont to plead.”²⁷

Oblivious to where their ideas really came from, some tried changing the words in their Bibles to conform to Arabic copies that curse Ham.²⁸ They thought, after all, that Ham's name meant 'black,' and interpreted Noah's three sons racially.²⁹ Even when they admitted Canaan was the one cursed, they lazily identified Canaan with Africa³⁰ or else assumed he should be “considered inclusive of Ham's descendants in the other branches.”³¹ They pushed their own views into the Bible under the guise of “facts and history,” figuring that since slavery and Africans seemed to go together naturally, it just had to be what Noah meant.³² Reasoning circularly back to what they wanted to believe, they concluded that Noah's words were an eternal decree by the Holy Spirit where “God appointed the race of Ham judicially to slavery,”³³ an institution they defended as “a cornerstone of a good society..., essential for producing and maintaining social order.”³⁴ (A ridiculous position, but a sincere one.  Sincere, and wicked.)

It's important to hear those voices from our national past, and to know how they got there, as a reminder of just how much damage we can do when we read into the Scriptures what we already want to believe, instead of allowing the goodness of the Scriptures challenge and shape us. Through the power of self-delusion, many American men and women solemnly believed that Scripture told them their obvious evil was good, and they built their society on it and waged war to defend it – even while clearer eyes saw that their tortured readings borrowed “the worst logic the devil ever used,”³⁵ in which, they said, “it is difficult to decide when the monstrous or the ludicrous predominates.”³⁶ These clearer eyes rightly pointed out that the curse was confined to Canaan only,³⁷ that Canaanites weren't black,³⁸ that none of the African nations traced descent from Canaan,³⁹ and that, thanks to generations of sexual abuse of female slaves, a large proportion of African-Americans were no longer legal heirs of Ham anyway.⁴⁰ They asked how slaveholders could be sure Noah's curse was still in force,⁴¹ or that they themselves weren't heirs of Canaan,⁴² especially since “probably more of the posterity of Shem and Japheth... have been enslaved... than those of Ham have. ”⁴³ They questioned whether Canaan's servitude was to be “individual bondage” rather than “national subjection and tribute,”⁴⁴ and showed that the Bible could've meant nothing like the crime of American slavery.⁴⁵ They left the self-deluded without excuse.

No one could deny, though, that Noah's words of curse changed the relationships among his sons, and sorted the world into winners and losers in a way there just hadn't been on the ark. So here Noah turns from the line of Ham to the line of another son, Shem. To balance the curse, we expect here to read a blessing, and we do – but indirectly.⁴⁶ Noah identifies the LORD as “the God of Shem” (Genesis 9:26). We haven't heard of the LORD as God of Adam, God of Abel, God of Enoch, or even God of Noah, but he's God of Shem. And Noah blesses this God of Shem, giving the LORD credit for Shem's godly kindness. Noah honors Shem in the best way possible: by glorifying God on his account. That's far better than any praise that could attach to my name or your name. So much better than hearing, “What a great job!”, “What a great sermon!”, is to hear, “What a great God!” The gift Noah gives his son is that the LORD should be “recognized and hallowed as the author of Shem's life and victories.”⁴⁷ And so “in blessing God, he made Shem beneficiary of greater blessing.”⁴⁸ Wherever Shem settles, Noah hopes there the LORD will be: “May the LORD dwell in the dwelling place of Shem.”⁴⁹ What's funny in all this is that Shem has the Bible's least creative name. Because that's what the name 'Shem' means: 'Name.'⁵⁰ “Hi, what's your name?” “Name... just Name.” The God of Name, the God of Renown, is Shem's God. So the psalmists will forever cry, “Sing to the LORD, bless his Shem” (Psalm 96:2), and call out, “For your Shem's sake, O LORD, preserve my life!” (Psalm 143:11). In this, we know we expect Shem to lead to Jesus.

But there's one last brother to mention, Japheth, whose name probably isn't even Hebrew, but it makes for a good Hebrew pun, because it sounds so much like the Hebrew word for 'wide' or 'open,' which is exactly what Noah prays for Japheth.⁵¹ It sounds, at first blush, like a prayer for Japheth's territorial stretch and prosperity, and early Christians figured he got just that: “Japheth increased and became powerful in his inheritance in the north and in the west,”⁵² with “many descendants.”⁵³ And yet, when Noah prays for Shem, he uses God's first name – LORD, Yahweh – but in praying for Japheth, Noah uses only the generic word 'God,' Elohim.⁵⁴ Japheth may prosper in the world, be big and strong, multiply and fill the earth... but they'll know God more distantly.

So Noah adds a further prayer for Japheth: that he will “dwell in the tents of Shem” (Genesis 9:27). Japheth, so great and vast, will move in to Shem's space. Some have read this as the privilege of conquest, Japheth taking Shem's property away and dispossessing him. Or maybe this reminds us that all Japheth's decency and nobility can only achieve true greatness through Shem's spiritual shepherding.⁵⁵ So Noah prays that Japheth and his seed will “participate in God's special blessings upon Shem” and, through him, come to know not just a god but the LORD.⁵⁶ Noah's prayer for God to make Japheth 'wide' is just as much a prayer to make Japheth 'open' – open of heart, open of soul, open to receive, open to respond, open to a share of Shem's blessedness.⁵⁷

At each of these stages, Noah reiterates the substance of his curse on Canaan, but presents it as a blessing to the other two lines. For Shem and his God, the LORD, “let Canaan be his servant” (Genesis 9:26). And once Japheth comes to share in what's Shem's, “let Canaan be his servant” (Genesis 9:27). Looking ahead, we know that God chooses tribes, the Hebrew offspring of Shem, and that they dwell in a foreign country, Egypt, “the land of Ham” (Psalm 105:23). But the LORD performed “wondrous works in the land of Ham” (Psalm 106:22), striking down “the firstfruits of their strength in the tents of Ham; then he led out his people” (Psalm 78:51-52). And he led them with careful instructions to “not do as they do in the land of Egypt, where you lived, nor do as they do in the land of Canaan, to which I am bringing you” (Leviticus 18:3).

And so after this exodus from the land of Ham, the LORD “brought them to his holy land..., he drove out the nations before them... and settled the tribes of Israel in their tents,” the tents of Shem in the land of Canaan (Psalm 78:54-55). Canaan fought that tooth-and-nail, but “the Israelites destroyed the dwelling places of Canaan and pressed their leaders into bondage.”⁵⁸ But one Canaanite family confessed their faith that “the LORD your God, he is God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath” (Joshua 2:11). “Justified by works” (James 2:25), the Bible says this family was “saved alive” (Joshua 6:25), and later tradition made them, through Rahab, ancestors of King David (Matthew 1:5). Another Canaanite district, Gibeon, chose to outwit Israel by tricking them into a peace treaty (Joshua 9:3-4). Joshua spared them but applied Noah's words to them: “You are cursed, and some of you shall never be anything but servants and cutters of wood and drawers of water for the house of my God” (Joshua 9:23). Obviously, Israel didn't start buying and selling Gibeonites. They had the privilege of carring out essential tasks for God's worship – filling the water basin in which priests purified themselves (Exodus 30:20), chopping the wood that would be burned up with holy sacrifices on the altar (Leviticus 1:7).⁵⁹ They gave their service at the Tent of the God of Shem, and so “this case of the Gibeonites,” one early Christian said, “fulfilled... the servitude of Canaan” already.⁶⁰

Centuries passed, and, “after being oppressed by the righteous people for many generations,” gradually the rest of Canaan's remnant “submitted to their control.”⁶¹ Yet, far from mistreating the Gibeonites, King David respected their rights and even made them an offering of atonement for Saul's zealous cruelty toward them (2 Samuel 21:1-9). David left the original Tent and Altar at Gibeon (1 Chronicles 16:39-42), where Solomon offered sacrifice and received his great wisdom (1 Kings 3:4-15), after which Solomon began building God a new house, a new tent, a temple (1 Kings 6:1-38). But he relied on the labor of Canaan's remnant: “these Solomon drafted as forced labor, as it is to this day; but of the people of Israel, Solomon made no slaves” (1 Kings 9:21-22). That shining temple where the LORD God condescended to dwell on earth? Canaanite hands carried the stones, Canaanite hands set the beams in place, Canaanite hands continued to bring the wood and water. Canaanites humbly offered these unseen labors as the backbone of the glorification of God! Yes, Noah, Canaan is a servant of the servants of God, that the LORD be exalted!

Isaiah there dreamt a day when the sons of Japheth, “who have not heard [God's] fame or seen [God's glory,” would hear the good news and gather to worship the LORD at that place (Isaiah 66:19-23). But it would have to wait. For the sins of the sons of Shem, they were subjected beneath “the descendants of Japheth who would rob the descendants of Shem.”⁶² But then the Word of God took on Semite flesh and Semite blood, pitching his tent among us as Jesus Christ (John 1:14), “the son of Shem, the son of Noah” (Luke 3:36). Salvation is from the Semites (John 4:22), and Jesus ministered chiefly to Shem while on earth. But he welcomed and celebrated the faith of a Roman centurion, a son of Japheth, and a Canaanite woman, a daughter of Ham, as even greater still (Matthew 8:10; 15:28). And so it was fulfilled: “Our God turned the curse into a blessing” (Nehemiah 13:2). Both trusted that in Jesus they could find a place in the tents of Shem, that a crumb of mercy there is wider than the world outside, that it's better to labor in the tabernacle of God than to rule where demons roam.

When St. Paul was sent forth, he reached out to his fellow Semites wherever he went, but acknowledge himself chiefly “an apostle to the Gentiles” (Romans 11:13), longing to bring Japheth into the tents of Shem. He'd found “the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations,” not even to Noah, “as it has now been revealed” (Ephesians 3:4-5). The mystery was that in the tents of Shem, Gentiles too taste the promises of God, Gentiles too share an inheritance, Gentiles too can belong to this body (Ephesians 3:6). Shem, who foreshadows Christ, is “the foundation, the root,”⁶³ but Japheth and Ham “were grafted in among the others and now share in the root of richness” (Romans 11:17). Christ “is our peace, who has... broken down the dividing wall of hostility” (Ephesians 2:14), the dividing curse of Noah (Galatians 3:13).

Now “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free..., for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). “The same Lord is the Lord of all” (Romans 10:12), the God of Shem but also God of Japheth and God of Ham (Romans 3:29-30), “bestowing his riches on all who call on him” (Romans 10:12), that Jesus “might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross” (Ephesians 2:16). The apostle's preaching stretched the tent to the world, ushering Japheth in, to the point that Martin Luther thought Ham could only enter by “irregular grace” because he remained barred from “access to the spiritual blessing.”⁶⁴ But today, more than one in four Christians lives in Africa, on track to be more than one in three in a couple decades – Ham's will become a plurality voice in the global church choir.⁶⁵

The beautiful truth is that Noah's curses and blessings were prophecies of a salvation history that ends with a tent wide open – wide open for all. It's just like Christians were saying nearly from the beginning: “Therefore, men from every land, whether slaves or free men, who believe in Christ and recognize the truths of his words and those of the prophets, fully realize that they will one day be united with him... to inherit imperishable blessings for all eternity,” in “the true tent that the Lord set up” (Hebrews 8:2), the Lord who bears the Name that is above every 'shem' (Philippians 2:9)!⁶⁶ For there, in that tent where “no longer will there be anything accursed..., his servants will worship him” as one blessed body, world without end (Revelation 22:3). Amen.

Sons Shameless and Shameful

The years are slipping by; the ark fades into the past. Day by day, they began to give their clean new world a more definite character, shaping and settling it. To this growing human family, Noah was ancestor and elder. In any society, “the continuity of the group was dependent on a constant stream of tradition passing through generations.”¹ But, as one philosopher ably puts it, “tradition requires fathers who are able to hand down and sons who are willing to receive.”² This parent-child bond, a link of transference of tradition between an older and a younger generation, is the basic building block of culture. Noah learned the ways of Enoch who walked before him; he heard the tales of righteous Abel; he knew the old, old stories and the deep, deep wisdom. If any legacy is to be left, it depends on an uninterrupted stream, of which Noah is a living symbol and carrier.

If society is to function in the present, its basic traditions have to be received as something with authority. And that means Noah, as the community elder passing along this tradition, has to be a patriarch – a father who rules. Before giving the terms of his covenant, God laid the groundwork for human government, a necessity if crime is to be punished and justice is to be done (Genesis 9:5-6). Noah automatically assumes that role. As Luther put it, “Noah alone ruled the church, the state, and his household.”³ That's a lot of authority concentrated in Noah's hands. Fatherhood, like all government, is a heavy weight; sons and daughters grapple with the consequences.⁴

And consequences there are. Having planted and tended a vineyard, Father Noah “drank of the wine, and he became drunk” (Genesis 9:21). As we've said before, ancient Jewish readers took this as some kind of festival of thanksgiving to God, and they usually assume that Noah merely took things furthest.⁵ With him also are sons Japheth, Shem, and “Ham the father of Canaan” (Genesis 9:18). What's interesting is that one of the few Canaanite stories we've found includes a scene where we overhear the Canaanite gods explain what makes for a good son. And two lines concern how a good Canaanite son cares for his drunk father on the way home from a sacred feast.⁶ A good son is there “to grasp [his father's] arm when he's drunk, to support him when sated with wine.”⁷ So we expect the father of Canaan to at least live up to Canaanite standards... right?

There's no indication Ham helps Noah home, although Noah does make it home. The next line in Genesis, we just know that Noah “uncovered himself in his tent” (Genesis 9:21). At least he's inside his tent, in private space, shrouded by a “social skin” that shields his state from public view.⁸ But now, and only now, does his son Ham step into the story – and step over the line. You don't waltz into the presidential bedroom on a White House tour, and neither should Ham be waltzing into Noah's tent uninvited. “Ham's first misdeed,” it's been suggested, “was his disrespectful invading of his father's private space.”⁹ He's in Noah's tent as an intruder.

I doubt it was by accident or with virtuous intent that Ham is in this tent, to find himself suddenly “in the wrong place at the wrong time.”¹⁰ It's hardly a good omen that Ham's name is all but the last letter of the Hebrew word ḥamas, 'violence,' as in what filled the world Noah was rescued from – and now it's in his tent.¹¹ What happens in there, the Bible may not spell out. One early rabbi suggested that Ham abused or even sexually assaulted Noah.¹² And a few modern scholars defend that interpretation.¹³ Others, inspired by the Law's identification of “your father's nakedness” with “the nakedness of your father's wife” (Leviticus 18:8), argue that, while Noah was unconscious, Ham took advantage of his own mother, who became pregnant with Canaan.¹⁴ A larger group of rabbis suggested that Ham went so far as to castrate Noah, hence why Noah did no more multiplying after the flood and also why he'd curse Ham's fourth son for stopping Noah from ever having a fourth son.¹⁵ A few modern scholars see parallels between Genesis here and Greek myths where the brother of Iapetus castrates and overthrows their father,¹⁶ which makes sense in a world of contested inheritance.¹⁷ Noah might be relieved to hear many scholars discount these stories,¹⁸ even if these dark possibilities lurk in the background on purpose.¹⁹

All we know for sure is that “Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father” (Genesis 9:22). This is the same word for 'saw' as when Eve “saw that the tree was... a delight to the eyes” (Genesis 3:6).²⁰ It's not a casual or passive noticing, as if Ham stumbled on the sight and just didn't close his eyes fast enough. This is a voluntary gazing, a searching, a looking into.²¹ Ham is willfully seeing his father's nakedness. Since ancient times, his motive has been cited as “idle curiosity.”²² Today, we tend to use that word, 'curiosity,' as a positive thing, the virtue of healthy interest in the world. But 'curiosity' used to be a bad word, a malformation of the human thirst for truth to “reflect pride and power rather than love and wonder.”²³ Medieval theologians catalogued all sorts of ways the quest to know could go wrong.²⁴ You could learn just so you can show off, or to service of sin, like a terrorist studying bomb-making techniques. Curiosity might also mean getting distracted from greater study for the sake of lesser knowledge, like a guy who memorizes sports statistics but can't be bothered to open his Bible. Curiosity might mean hunting for knowledge in all the wrong places, like tarot cards and crystal balls. It might mean hunting knowledge severed from its meaning – studying the world, but never as creature of the Creator. And curiosity can mean hunting knowledge that just isn't for you – prying into people's private affairs, wasting time on what you can't get, demanding knowledge that isn't available. As one Jewish teacher put it, “What is committed to you, pay heed to; what is hidden is not your concern. In matters that are beyond you, do not meddle, when you've been shown more than you can understand” (Sirach 3:22-23).

Ham stands here as the role model for people who want to peer behind things like tradition and authority and custom, who believe they have the right to every truth, who deem nothing sacred when it stands in the way.²⁵ Ham aims to gaze on the naked truth, no matter the cost. He insists on seeing through the chains that would bind him to be a part of society rather than its very author. He will accept no limits on what he may see; his appetite for first-hand knowledge is ravenous, gluttonous, an uncontrolled passion. And so Ham, champion of curiosity, takes a clear-eyed look here at the spring whence his starting seed sprang.

Leering shamelessly at Noah's wrinkled body, sniffing a whiff of Noah's boozy breath, looming in awful judgment over Noah's bareness, Ham finds nothing to inspire his awe – nothing cosmic, nothing impressive, nothing beautiful or good or true. This is the mystery of generation? This is the seat of authority? Ham just can't believe it. His faith shatters on the shoals of the scandal. He finds it irrational, childish, silly. “Ham laughs when he sees his father stripped naked.”²⁶ In Ham's searching, scoffing, sneering study of his sotted sire's shame, “eliminated is the father as authority, as guide, as teacher of law, custom, and a way of life.”²⁷ Ham sees through it, behind it; all such things now lie disenchanted and demythologized at his feet. Ham is almost a prototype of “democratic man..., who seems also to be deaf to authority and who knows neither awe nor reverence.”²⁸ Ham, asserting his equality of rights, laughs at what he no longer believes in.

In fact, he can't believe he ever believed in Noah. Ham finds nothing worthy of respect or loyalty in this body he surveys, and Ham allows that snapshot of a scene to drown in him what the flood could not. As a result of this fractured faith, Ham's deconstruction leaves a sour taste on his tongue. His disbelief is served with sides of anger and betrayal. Feeling silly for having credited the incredible, Ham deflects onto Noah and conjures deep offense at Noah for having had the gall to appear righteous. In this, he's a lot like Michal, married to David but still a Saul's girl at heart. When King David seemed to beclown himself by “uncovering himself” in public like a “vulgar fellow” (2 Samuel 6:20), Michal “looked... and saw... and she despised him in her heart” (2 Samuel 6:16). Just so, here “Ham, like Michal, gazes at his father in the tent in a hostile manner,” despising Noah in his heart.²⁹ Luther goes so far as to say Ham develops “a satanic and bitter hatred against his father.”³⁰

Now, even here in the abyss of deconstruction, Ham could journey back upwards. He can't unseen what he thinks he's seen, can't unknow what he thinks he knows. But he can choose to be kind, can be charitable, can be humble. He can repent of callous, cruel curiosity. He can hope for love to overcome his hate. He can pray for his faith to grow again from seed, a mature faith reconstructed to cope with a parent whose ways aren't immediately apparent through the wrinkles and the mess. Out of basic human decency if nothing else, “he should have covered his father.”³¹ But he refuses. He leaves Noah naked and alone.

Ham ventures forth from the tent with a crusading zeal, determined to haul Noah's nakedness into the open, verbally and conceptually if not physically. His Canaanite descendants would tell us that a good son was called “to refute the calumnies of [his father's] detractors,”³² and “to drive his troublers away.”³³ Ham chooses instead to become the detractor and troubler of his father. He went out and “told his two brothers outside” what he had seen and learned (Genesis 9:22), maybe bringing their father's clothing in hand “as evidence of Noah's drunken state.”³⁴ Ham goes public. To his brothers, he “pointed out the nakedness of the father.”³⁵

No doubt Ham defends himself as a straight-shooter, just calling 'em like he sees 'em.³⁶ But Ham “proclaimed aloud what it was right to leave untold.”³⁷ Even on a charitable reading, this is just “malicious, disrespectful gossip,” an unnecessary truth filtered through prejudiced eyes and spewed out of place like so much dirt.³⁸ “The tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness... set on fire by hell..., a restless evil, full of deadly poison” (James 3:6-8). That fiery tongue here recounts Noah's condition, not impartially or innocently or out of concern, but out of a calculated desire to “blacken his good name,”³⁹ to degrade Noah from lord and loved one to laughingstock. Ham will have nothing to do with the Law's demand to “honor thy father and thy mother” (Exodus 20:12), or with the New Law's demand to “obey your leaders and submit to them” (Hebrews 13:17). He takes immense comfort and glee in Noah's apparent downfall,⁴⁰ as though this ripped away forever Noah's right to sit in judgment, as though this were Ham's hour of liberation unto license.

Allowing resentment to nurse a delusion of vindication, Ham was overwhelmed with “a desire for mocking.”⁴¹ His public words are meant as knives with which he might neuter Noah, taking captive his father's reputation.⁴² Ham thus “arose impudently against his father,” aiming to humiliate Noah, “to undermine Noah,” effectively to overpower and overthrow Noah once and for all.⁴³ Ham becomes the new world's “first rebel against law and authority,”⁴⁴ aiming to let it fall away – or else fall into his hand, as he assumes (so he thinks) his father's place.

“Ham hastened to invite others to view the sight,” to share in Ham's freedom, to confirm his ascended status.⁴⁵ Like a serpent in the garden, he tempts his brethren to open their eyes to the naked truth, to taste and see that the father's authority is bad, that his tradition is foolish, decrepit, unsuited for the demands of a brave new world. Unlike Adam and Eve, Shem and Japheth discount the hissing. They were “above heeding such evil counsel.”⁴⁶ Where Ham sees Noah's plight as a comedy, they recognize a tragedy.⁴⁷ “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers” (Psalm 1:1).

In what comes next, Jewish lore suggested that “Shem commenced the good deed,”⁴⁸ “Shem took his garment, and he stood up.”⁴⁹ Genesis just says that “Shem and Japheth took the garment” (Genesis 9:23), perhaps Noah's cloak which Ham had stolen to support his scurrilous report. Whoever initiated the action, once they picked up the garment, “they laid it on both their shoulders” (Genesis 9:23), literally shouldering together the burden of making reparations for what he's stolen, to redress “the evil intent of their brother.”⁵⁰

How'd they do it? How did they find a solution that didn't break things worse? “They walked backwards, and they covered the nakedness of their father” (Genesis 9:23). As one early Christian put it, the brothers “neither approved nor betrayed the fault of the saintly man.”⁵¹ They don't go around trying to justify Noah as what he's not, trying to say it's so good he's drunk and naked; but neither do they betray him, as Ham did. Instead, they simply “made it their one concern to right the situation speedily,” and then yield Noah space to awaken.⁵² So what Ham discovered dis-covered, they covered up again, restoring to him a sign of his status.⁵³ In so clothing the man made naked by the fruit of his vineyard, Shem and Japheth become imitators of the LORD God who, when Adam and Eve stumbled naked from the garden, “clothed them” (Genesis 3:21).

In walking backwards, “their faces were backwards, and they did not see their father's nakedness” (Genesis 9:23). Shem and Japheth did not participate in Ham's sin. They refused to degrade Noah with judgmental or even inquisitive looks. They disciplined their eyes to not see their father in an undignified state, “lest their reverence for their father be diminished even by a single glance.”⁵⁴ Eyes fixed firmly on the flaps of the tent, they walked backwards until Noah was covered, and then shifted gears back into drive, their eyes unwavering until they were again outside the tent. Perhaps, as one ancient teacher thought, they did it “trembling all the while,” believing that Noah “was protected by angels both while awake and while asleep.”⁵⁵

In their solemn entry and respectful retreat, Shem and Japheth reaffirmed Noah's worth in exactly the way Ham didn't. In fact, the Hebrew word order closing their account – “the nakedness of their father not did they see” – is almost exactly flipped from when “saw Ham... the nakedness of his father,” highlighting how backwards they acted by Ham's standards.⁵⁶ But backwards by Ham's standards, backwards by the cruel world's standards, is the right way for one to walk. In all they do here, Shem and Japheth, no doubt to Ham's bitter annoyance, broadcast “their complete rejection of both his arguments and his values.”⁵⁷

So, where Ham was a champion of curiosity, Shem and Japheth have eyes studiously open to all things but one. In any system of thought, there's always a foundational axiom that can't be derived from anything more basic; and, just so, human community is built on fundamental principles which Shem and Japheth cannot dispense with as Ham has. They therefore accept the fact of authority, however fallible; they embrace law and order, however frail; they submit to tradition, however forgettable. They will still receive what Noah hands on, that they might not approach their own sons and daughters empty-handed. Shem and Japheth thus, with ample reason, walk in and out of Noah's tent “by faith and not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7), with what one writer dubs “a pious act of willful ignorance” for the sake of saving a family, a society, a world.⁵⁸ What's turned their gaze away from Ham's 'naked truth' is simply the power of love, by which they know more than Ham's loveless eyes.

Later Jews saw this kind of filial piety in cultic terms, saying that “kindness to a father will not be forgotten: it will serve as a sin-offering, it will take lasting root. In time of trouble, it will be recalled to your advantage; like warmth upon frost, it will melt away your sins” (Sirach 3:14-15). Their kindness was reenacted by Israel in the wilderness. Whenever the camp would move, in God's tent the priests had to “take down the veil of the screen and cover the ark of the testimony with it” (Numbers 4:5). As one Jewish scholar observes, the priests “use that curtain to effectively shield their eyes from the Holy Ark until they use that very curtain to cover it, protecting its dignity by ensuring that it never be exposed.”⁵⁹ The ark and other holy things needed to be dressed, as though they were the nakedness of God within his tent (Numbers 4:7-14). Even the closest Levite cousins to the priestly line “shall not go in to look on the holy things even for a moment,” as Ham did, “lest they die” (Numbers 4:20) – for later, people did die when “they looked upon the Ark of the LORD” naked (1 Samuel 6:17). One role of the priests, then, was to be a Shem-style son to God the Father, preventing the sins of Ham.

Christians of the early centuries found the piety of Shem and Japheth to be even a better model for theology than the curiosity of Ham. In Ham barging in to grapple with his father's 'naked truth,' they saw a forecast of heretics' theology sans humility. Heretics were often guilty of “meddlesome inquiries.”⁶⁰ “Where are those who say they have attained and possess the fullness of knowledge? The fact is that they have really fallen into the deepest ignorance.” That's Ham's 'naked truth' right there. “In heaven, they veil their eyes; on earth, the busybodies are obstinate and shamelessly try to hold their eyes fixed on his ineffable glory.”⁶¹ Such “an investigator, were he able, would strip off all the glory of the Son to observe.”⁶²

The truth is that “anything worth believing must be approached with pious humility.”⁶³ “When we seek to know in a virtuous manner, we fear and obey God, and we accept our finite limits in knowing.”⁶⁴ God will always be greater than we can fully know, but knowing God by grace is the highest aim of the human mind. That's why there's a real virtue at work both in good theology and in any other good thinking. “Studious Christians come to know both God and creatures more deeply,” precisely because they aim at deeper intimacy with Creator and creation on God's terms.⁶⁵ And God's terms are, at heart, the cross, which – as we marveled last Sunday – were foreshadowed by Noah's plight, drunk and naked and vulnerable.

Roman soldiers by the hundreds made sport of Jesus: “They mocked him... and they spit on him and struck him on the head” (Matthew 27:29-30). So too, “Herod and his soldiers treated him with contempt and mocked him” (Luke 23:11). At Calvary, soldiers stripped him of his garments, leaving Christ in the nakedness of Noah; and in that condition, they crucified him (Mark 15:23-24). In that dark hour when God Incarnate was pinned naked to a cross, this was in some way the greatest revelation in history of “Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 1:24). “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified” (John 12:23).

But, St. Paul says, the revelation of God in “Christ crucified” is “a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles” (1 Corinthians 1:23). “Those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads” (Mark 15:29). “So also the chief priests, with the scribes, mocked him to one another” (Mark 15:31). It was Ham's finest hour, or so he thought, as man and woman, Jew and Gentile, gathered around the cross to jeer the dying Lord. But after the temple veil tore to reveal emptiness within (Mark 15:38), disciples took the naked corpse of the Lord and covered it in a shroud (Mark 15:46). The deeds of Shem and Japheth were a foreshadowing of “the piety of the people who believed” in Jesus,⁶⁶ who “do not look at their father's nakedness,” the dead Christ, but “honor it with a veil” by proclaiming not only his cross but his resurrection.⁶⁷ Going forth, we imitate Shem and Japheth in word and deed: “I was naked, and you clothed me,” says the Lord (Matthew 25:36).

And he returns the favor. “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ” (Galatians 3:27), and so have “put on the new self which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its Creator” (Colossians 3:10). Each of us, at that baptism, may stand and shout with the prophet, “He has clothed me with the garments of salvation; he has covered me with the robe of righteousness!” (Isaiah 61:10).

Alas, at times we stumble, we sully or strip off our garments. People turn out to be messy, and it's easy to find fault if we're looking for it. But as a medieval theologian said, “to observe our neighbor's faults with the intention of looking down upon them, or of detracting them, or even with no further purpose than that of disturbing them, is sinful.”⁶⁸ We must not be each other's Hams. Hence one old bishop pleaded, “Let us not draw attention to our neighbors' faults. Should we learn about them from others, far from being anxious to see their nakedness, let us rather, like the right-minded sons, conceal them, cover them up, strive to raise the fallen person by exhortation and advice, instructing him in the magnitude of God's love, the extraordinary degree of his goodness, his boundless compassion.”⁶⁹ That doesn't apply, of course, to abuse or crime or genuine public interest: “It is not backbiting to reveal a man's hidden sin... for the good of public justice.”⁷⁰ But in all our worst sins, Christ offers us, if we'll buy them by repentance, “white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen” any more (Revelation 3:18).

When we at last succumb to the heady wine of death and are denuded of the body, we're “longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, if indeed, by putting it on, we may not be found naked” (2 Corinthians 5:3). Our true desire is resurrection, to “be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up in life” (2 Corinthians 5:4). These aren't garments we can put on ourselves, helpless as corpse and ghost. Only our True Shem can cover us and wake us to new life, a sobriety and strength heretofore unknown, “raised in glory..., raised in honor” (1 Corithians 15:43). Clothe us eternally, Lord Jesus, and unveil to us the fullness of your glory! Amen.