Transcription
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[Music] Welcome to the Naked Bible podcast, episode 159. Noah's nakedness, the sin of Ham, and the curse of Canaan. I'm the layman, Jerry Strickland, and he's a scholar, Dr. Michael Heiser. Hey Mike, how you doing this week?
Pretty good. How are you?
I'm doing good. I'm excited for another good episode. I like these topical episodes. It's a nice break from the book, which we'll be voting on very soon, maybe in the next couple of weeks or so. We'll, we'll post it up there so people can vote on the next book that we get into. But until then, I'm enjoying these topical episodes. I said, I think you're just, you're just looking forward to Noah's nakedness here. I think I think you got a mascot now.
I've got to take it, right? So yeah, there you go. Yeah.
Well, this is one, I think, if memory serves, that we, we actually touched on some of this in a Q&A. That's probably where I said, "Hey, we need to do a whole episode on this or something like that." So here we are. Again, for newsletter subscribers, I have uploaded an article that I think to date is the best treatment of this issue. And I'm going to be, you know, not, I'm not going to, I think I'll read a couple things in the article, but basically, the research here that I'm going to present to you, again, try to make it decipherable for a lay audience, really depends on it. It comes from this article. It's by John, I hope I get his middle name correct here, Seats. John Seats Bergsma and Scott Walker Han. The article is entitled "Noah's Nakedness and the Curse on Canaan" from the Journal of Biblical Literature, vol. 124, issue 1, back in 2005, pages 25 through 40. So if you're a newsletter subscriber, you will have access to the protected folder and you can get that article and read, read it with a lot more details than what we'll cover here. But I'm going to give you the basics and hopefully explain clearly why this problematic passage in Genesis 9 really does have a good answer. There is a way to make sense of this.
So let's just start off by reading the passage. This is going to be Genesis 9:18 through 25 is what we'll read. We, let's just jump in. We're using ESV. It says, "The sons of Noah who went forth from the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Ham was the father of Canaan. These three were the sons of Noah, and from these the people of the whole earth were dispersed. Noah began to be a man of the soil, and he planted a vineyard. He drank of the wine and became drunk and lay uncovered in his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brothers outside. 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 returned backward, and they did not see their father's nakedness. When Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done to him, he said, 'Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be to his brothers.'" That's the end of the, the section here.
So this is a familiar story, and it's one that's really puzzled people for a long time. And, and once we go through this material, I think you're gonna see how, you know, if you're not sort of tuned in to, especially idiomatic expressions in Biblical Hebrew, it's very easy to misinterpret this passage. So I'm hoping by the end of it, you'll, you'll draw that conclusion or see what I mean by that statement.
Now, let's talk about how this passage has been approached traditionally. There are three traditional views held by various Jewish groups or sects, Jewish sources, and of course, Christian interpreters over, over a long course of time. The first one is voyeurism. This is the idea that what I just read, the sin of Ham, was just looking at Noah's naked body. So the problem here is that it was forbidden. There's some taboo about looking upon nudity, and that's the sin that Ham commits, and he embarrasses Noah, and then Noah curses Canaan. Now, this has been popular since antiquity. The strength of the position, I'll just read, you know, from, from the article, part on page 27, they, they write this: "The strength of this position is its conservatism. It refuses to see anything in the text that is not explicit. Yet, in a sense, voyeurism is a non-explanation, since it fails to elucidate either the gravity of Ham's offense or the reason for the curse of Canaan. It also requires the interpreter to assume the existence of a taboo against the accidental sight of a naked parent that is otherwise unattested in biblical or ancient Near Eastern literature." Okay, so there you go. I mean, it is really looking, you know, you walk into a tent, you see your, your dad, they're naked and unexpectedly, and then that that merits the cursing of your son, Canaan. It just seems like it's overkill. And again, we don't really have any evidence that it was, it was taboo to, to just like come upon someone's naked body and see them, and then you were in big trouble. You know, there's nothing like that in biblical or ancient Near Eastern law. But nevertheless, this has become, you know, again, probably the leading, in a traditional view, and it really derives from, from the statement that "Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father" in verse 22. Okay, that's really where it comes from. So, simple voyeurism is probably the leading traditional view. And again, its primary weakness, other than again, not having a law that or anything in the Bible that would just say this is awful, it really doesn't explain the curse on Canaan at all.
Second view is castration. Believe it or not. This is the idea that Ham goes into Noah's tent and castrates him. This is a rabbinic idea. You'll see this in, in rabbinic discussion about the passage. And to quote Bergsma and Han, their article again, they, they provide just a little snippet of an explanation here or comment. They say, "One can cite examples from ancient Near Eastern mythology, although none from the Bible, of a son castrating his father as part of an effort to usurp his authority. This view also provides some rationale, albeit complex." This is me now. I think that's a generous term. I think it's, it's pretty strained, personally. But back to the quotation: "It also provides some rationale, albeit complex, for the cursing of Canaan. Noah curses Ham's fourth son since Ham deprived Noah of a fourth son." What is lacking, however, is any lexical hint in the text of Genesis 9 that would suggest castration." End of quote. So basically, it comes down to there's no, there's no evidence in the text that Noah was castrated. So that's a big problem. And the explanation of Canaan's cursing is pretty strained. It has to assume that Noah had a fourth son. Again, if there's, there's nothing that actually says that.
Third traditional view is, again, one that is pretty common. Castration is probably the least common today of these. Usually, it's voyeurism or this next one. But again, a lot of people hold to this position as well. And that is that the sin of Ham is paternal incest. In other words, Noah was sexually abused by Ham. Okay, there's a homosexual violation here. Now, Gagnon, in his otherwise excellent book, "The Bible and Homosexual Practice," actually takes this view. I don't, I don't take the paternal incest view. It will become evident as we go on, and there is really secure biblical textual reason, reasons for not taking this view. But Gagnon, again, takes this view. He's very influential in the discussion of the Bible and homosexuality. And again, it's an excellent book, but I disagree with him on this point here. He's sort of representative that this has a pretty good following, pretty solid following. Now, the basis of of this idea and its problems. Let's just give a quick overview. If you go to Genesis 9:24, you read this. You read it a phrase to the effect that Noah saw "what his son had done to him." Now, that suggests, and I would agree with this point, that suggests that we have some crime committed here that go well beyond just accidentally seeing nakedness. In other words, it goes well beyond voyeurism. So proponents of this will say, "Look, something was done to Noah here. It's not just seeing the nakedness." And they, they would sort of think logically and say, "Well, what, what could be done to Noah here that would be so bad?" And then, you know, eventually they're gonna get to, you know, sexual violation. They say, "Well, how do they get there?" Well, here's how you get there. The phrase that describes what Ham did, or what he did, and that phrase is this: "He saw the nakedness of his father." Is an idiomatic expression for sexual intercourse. Now, that's true, and we'll talk about what that means and how we know that that's the case in a moment. But just, just let's stick with what this view says. So we have an idiom here. "Saw the nakedness of his father" is an idiom for sexual intercourse. And so the view argues that, okay, since we know this, and something was done to Noah, we do the math. We put the two things together. Ham sexually abuses his father. We have paternal incest. As you're gonna find out, again, the view of the, the two authors of the article that I've posted in the, in the folder, and my own view, because I think they're right, I think it's very persuasive. What they're gonna argue, I think this view gets the idiom somewhat correct, but then misapplies it. If we go with the homosexual violation here, it doesn't explain again why Canaan is cursed. Why isn't Ham cursed? If Ham sexually violates his father, why isn't Ham the one that's in trouble? Why isn't Ham the one that's cursed? When he saw what his son had done to him, I mean, Noah knows who did what, but then he doesn't curse him. He curses Canaan. Ham is never cursed in the passage. And let me just pause there. I mean, I mean, part of my distance teaching, I have an assignment that's based on this passage, and I'm amazed at how many students just don't know that last point. They assume that Ham is the one that gets cursed. He's not. Read the passage. Canaan is the one that gets cursed, not Ham. And if Ham is sexually violating his father, that just doesn't really sound reasonable. Let's just be honest. So we have a problem here. Even though this is a popular view, we have a problem here on why Canaan gets cursed and Ham nothing is done to him in the passage. I would suggest again, there's a better view to understand this that actually extends from the biblical data. And the paternal incest view gets part of this right, but then again, misapplies what what is being seen in the text.
So here we go. Let's just start with the idea of the, the Hebrew idiom in this phrase, this "seeing the nakedness of his father." For those of you who may not know, or may not want to admit, you know, you might not be familiar with what an idiom is. So what's an idiom? An idiom is an expression. Let me give you an example in English. If I say, "The issue of abortion is a hot potato." You're never going to understand what I mean by doing word studies on the words "hot" and "potato." Okay? You could, you know, you can have everything that Mike's ever said and written and concord it and search it for the words "hot" and "potato," and you're never going to understand what I mean by that expression. So an idiom is something, it's an expression that sort of has to be known within a cultural context. If you combine the words "hot" and "potato" in that sense, "the issue of abortion is a hot potato," and you're familiar with the cultural context, how that phrase, how that combination gets used, then you're going to be able to understand. And I'm sure everyone in the audience does understand that when I say "the issue of abortion is a hot potato," what I mean is that the issue of abortion is really explosively controversial. Okay? You know that not because you've studied the words "hot" and "potato." You know that because you're part of the culture, you're part of the group that just knows what that expression means by experience. Okay? So an idiom is an expression. Now, what we have in Genesis 9 is indeed a Hebrew idiom. To see, the Hebrew word is *ra'ah*, to see the nakedness, Hebrew there is *ervah*, to see the nakedness of someone is idiomatic. It's an, it's an expression for sexual intercourse. Now, how do we know that? Well, if we go to Leviticus 20:17, we read this: "If a man takes his sister, a daughter of his father or a daughter of his mother, and sees her nakedness, and she sees his nakedness, it is a disgrace, and they shall be cut off in the sight of the children of their people. He has uncovered his sister's nakedness, and he shall bear his iniquity." The key here is to understand that "uncovering nakedness," which describes the act of removing, you know, clothing, removing your clothing from the genital area for the purpose of sex, so you understand that "uncovering nakedness" and "seeing nakedness" are equated in this passage. Did you notice that? We have the idiom "to see the nakedness of," "sees her nakedness," and that's paralleled to "uncovering nakedness." The same expression, or a similar expression, but with two different verbs: "see" and "uncover." Now, that's important because if you actually search for the phrase "uncovering nakedness," and there, the Hebrew word is *galah*, uncover, you're gonna find passages that very clearly and explicitly show that "uncovering nakedness" is a reference to sexual intercourse. And once you discern that, then you go back to Leviticus 20:17 and say, "Aha! Well, uncovering nakedness is to have sex, and that's in parallel with seeing nakedness, and that must also mean to have sexual relations." So this is what we're dealing with.
But let's just back up a little bit. Leviticus 18. Listen to the "uncovering nakedness" terminology. This is the section in Leviticus where we are, we have essentially the Holiness Code on sexual morality, or moral. Let's start in verse six. Leviticus 18: "None of you shall approach any one of his close relatives to uncover nakedness. I am the Lord. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father, which is the nakedness of your mother; she is your mother; you shall not uncover her nakedness. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father's wife; it is your father's nakedness. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your sister, your father's daughter or your mother's daughter, whether brought up in the family or in another home. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your son's daughter or of your daughter's daughter, for their nakedness is your own nakedness. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father's wife's daughter, brought up in your father's family, since she is your sister. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father's sister; she is your father's relative. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your mother's sister, for she is your mother's relative. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father's brother; that is, you shall not approach his wife; she is your aunt. Verse 15: You shall not uncover the nakedness of your daughter-in-law; she is your son's wife; you shall not uncover her nakedness. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your brother's wife; it is your brother's nakedness. You shall not uncover the nakedness of a woman and of her daughter, and you shall not take her son's daughter or her daughter's daughter to uncover her nakedness; they are relatives; it is depravity. And you shall not take a woman as a rival wife to your sister, uncovering her nakedness while her sister is still alive." And this idiomatic expression "to uncover nakedness" also occurs in Ezekiel 16. Can we spend a good deal of time there? Again, a very sexually explicit passage. But in Ezekiel 16:36, of verse 37, we read this. Now let's go back to verse 35: "Therefore, O harlot, hear the word of the Lord: Thus says the Lord God, 'Because your lust was poured out and your nakedness uncovered in your whoring with your lovers and with all your abominable idols, and because of the blood of your children that you gave to them, therefore behold, I will gather all your lovers, with whom you took pleasure, all those who you loved and all those you hated. I will gather them against you from every side and will uncover your nakedness to them, that they may see all your nakedness.'" And the context of Ezekiel 16, again, very, very sexual and orientation. Ezekiel 22:10 has the same idea. Let's just go there. Again, we're focused on the phrase "uncover nakedness." Verse 10: "In you men uncover their fathers' nakedness; in you they violate women who are unclean in their menstrual impurity." Again, it's a reference to sexual intercourse with people you shouldn't be having sex with. Ezekiel 23, next chapter, we'll start in verse 10. Here, Ezekiel 23:10: "The Assyrians, again, talking about Jerusalem, you know, Judah's relationships with the Assyrians. These, and the Assyrians uncovered her nakedness; they seized her sons and her daughters, and as for her, they killed her with a sword. She became a byword among women. When judgment had been executed on her, her sister Oholibah saw this, and she became more corrupt than her sister in her lust and in her whoring, which was worse than that of her sister." Again, very clear sexual context. You go down to verse 18: "When she carried on her whoring so openly and flaunted her nakedness, I turned in disgust from her, as I had turned in disgust from her sister." Verse 29: Again, the sexual context is very clear. "They shall deal with you in hatred," and again, the people that the Lord is going to bring up against the city, "and take away all the fruit of your labor, and leave you naked and bare, and the nakedness of your whoring shall be uncovered." And so again, the context is pretty clear. "Uncovering nakedness" is clearly, if you go back to Leviticus 18, it's just over and over and over again with forbidden sexual relationships. "Uncovering nakedness" is clearly an idiomatic expression for, word to have sex with. And since that phrase, that idiom, is used in parallel in Leviticus 20:17 with "to see nakedness," scholars, and again, I would conclude, would say this, that both of them are idiomatic expressions for the same thing: to have sex with.
Now, to this point, this is the argument of the paternal incest view, the homosexual violation view. Because people will go to Genesis 9, again, let's go back to our passage, and they'll say, "Look, look what Ham did. He saw the nakedness of his father." And since we know that "see the nakedness of" is a euphemism for "have sex with," he had sex with his father. This is a homosexual violation. It's paternal incest. But that misses something in Leviticus 18. Let me read it again, okay? And you're gonna see what we're tracking on here. We do not have homosexual intercourse here. We have heterosexual intercourse going on. So I'll give you that heads-up. I'll listen to Leviticus 18 again. Verse six: "None of you shall approach any one of his close relatives to uncover nakedness. I am the Lord. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father, which is the nakedness of your mother; she is your mother; you shall not uncover her nakedness. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father's wife." Catch this. "It is your father's nakedness." Verse 10, we'll skip down. "You shall not uncover the nakedness of your son's daughter or your daughter's daughter, for their nakedness is your own nakedness." Verse 14: "You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father's brother; that is, you shall not approach his wife; she is your aunt." Verse 16: "You shall not uncover the nakedness of your brother's wife; it is your brother's nakedness." What this phrase means, "to uncover the nakedness of your father," it actually means don't mess with his wife. Okay? "Do not uncover the nakedness of your father, which is the nakedness of your mother." Seeing an Old Testament, against Semitic patriarchal culture, the nakedness of a man was defined as the woman that belonged to him. So that's why Leviticus has this wording to us. It sounds very confusing, but if you understand the idiom, it's not: "Do not uncover the nakedness of your father, which is the nakedness of your mother." She's your mother. Okay? "Don't uncover the nakedness of your father's wife." Why, why shouldn't I uncover the nakedness of my father's wife? Because it's your father's nakedness. Well, I thought it was my father's. Why? Oh, that's right, it is. Because to uncover a man's nakedness means to have sex with the woman who belongs to him. That's what's missing in this whole discussion. It's very clear that "to see nakedness" and "to uncover nakedness" are both idioms for sexual intercourse. But then people will take that and go back to Genesis 9 and they'll say, "Look, 'see nakedness,' that means 'have sex with.'" And look, look what Ham did. "Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness, nakedness of his father." Not him. You know, again, the boys say, "Well, he's just looking at Noah's naked body." And the paternal incest view will say, "Look, he saw the nakedness of his father. He had sex with his father." No, what it actually means, if you go back to Leviticus, is "to see the nakedness of your father" or "to see the nakedness of any particular man, your brother," is to take that man's woman, take that man's wife sexually. What we have in Genesis 9 is not paternal incest. What we have in Genesis 9 is maternal incest. This idiom, in fact, either one, "to see nakedness" or "uncover nakedness," is never used in the passages that condemn homosexuality. It's not an idiom that's used for homosexual violation or intercourse. There you have terms like *shakav* to lie with another man. This idiom, "to uncover a man's nakedness," is saying, "Do not have sex with the woman to whom or, you know, that who belongs to that man. Don't do that." Again, if you don't know that, if you don't see that, then you're going to get a homosexual violation in Genesis 9, where what you should be getting is maternal incest. Ham had sex with Noah's wife. Ham had sex with his own mother. That's the problem. That is the crime.
So Shem, go, go, let's just think about the story. Shem and Japheth walk, you know, they, Ham is like, "Hey, guess what I just did?" Sex with Mom. It's sex with our father's mother, or for our father's wife, you know, our father's woman. Well, now Noah is, of course, the patriarchal head of the family. And we're gonna talk about the meaning of what Ham does. But he goes out and he tells his brothers. What do the brothers do? They walk backward and cover their father's nakedness, which again, I'm suggesting, and the idiom says, is their mother. They go in and they, they refuse to look at her naked body, for sure, because they're backward. But they cover it. Why do they do it this way? Why do they do what they do and do it this way? The account telegraphs a very commendable gesture. The gesture distances them from any sense of either mutual lust or approval of what Ham had done. It puts a significant barrier between them. It, you know, it's gonna cast them as the good guys here.
So what about verses 20 and 21? It says, "Noah began to be a man of the soil, and he planted a vineyard. He drank of the wine and became drunk and lay uncovered in his tent." Doesn't "his tent" suggest that Ham had sex with his father? You know, Ham goes into Noah's tent, and the assumption is Noah is the only one there to have sex with. Well, actually, not. Let's think, just think with me there. There's gonna be a textual issue here. But just think with me logically here. Noah's wife could have been in Noah's tent. If it is Noah's tent, okay, they could have had sex as a couple. Then Ham comes in and does what he does, okay, to his mom. Or maybe Noah got drunk, passed out, and Ham comes in there and seizes the opportunity. Noah can't defend his wife, Ham's mom. Any of those scenarios could account for the "his tent" terminology. But there's actually a textual issue here. In Hebrew, what gets translated "his tent" here is *ohel*. Should be translated "her tent" because we have the noun *ohel* with a suffix, third feminine singular suffix, which is the *ohelah*. If you can read Hebrew, and we'll reproduce this in the transcript, or at least transliterated, this is a third feminine singular suffix on the noun. It should be translated "her tent." Now, the Masoretes actually suggest that, you know, a quote correction here, a third masculine singular suffix would be the letter *vav* instead of the letter *hey* that's actually here in the text. So that's where scholars will come across this. Some translators thought it should be "his tent," so that's what we're going to translate it, even though in the text it's, it's really "her tent." Well, I'm suggesting that, hey, let's just stick with with the text as we have it written here. Ham, you know, finds them in her tent. So if Noah was in there, all these scenarios I just described apply as well. It doesn't really matter whose tent it is, you know, at the end of the day, because if Noah is passed out or incapacitated or whatever, Ham is going to be taking advantage of his mother. So the reference to Noah's tent really doesn't do anything because again, logically, it doesn't matter. And it actually should be translated "her tent" anyway. Proof of this again, other than grammar, and the grammar is what it is, or the morphology is what it is, it is a third feminine singular ending. *Ohel*. Genesis 24:67. Here's how the English has it. This is Isaac and Rebecca's story. "Then Isaac brought her, Rebecca, in the story, into the tent of Sarah, his mother, and took Rebecca, and she became his wife, and he loved her. So Isaac was comforted after his mother's death." Now, in Hebrew, and here's what we actually have literally, we have again, for those who know Hebrew, it's *vayetzeh ha'ohelah*. Literally, it is "and he brought in Isaac brought," and again, Rebecca is the one in context, "and Isaac brought her into her tent, into her tent, the tent of Sarah, his mother." The point is, look, Sarah was dead, and Isaac apparently is living in her tent, or at least her part of the bigger patriarchal tent complex there. And so he brings Rebecca home, and he takes her into her tent, into his mother's tent, is her mother's old tent space, her old living space, and that's where they're gonna live. So we have the same form, the *ohel*, *ohel* is the Hebrew word for tent, and then the third feminine singular suffix on it, and it's very clearly a reference to a woman's tent here in Genesis 24:67. It's Sarah's old tent, but of course, she's now deceased.
So what we have in Genesis 9, again, to summarize, then we're gonna move on to talk about what the meaning of all this is, is Ham, I would, I would suggest, goes to his mother's tent, or looks in the, we don't know how the, the tent structure was set up, you know, if you're nomadic and patriarchal, you know, you have a big tent and it's divided into compartments, which incidentally is the meaning of "in my house are many mansions," you know, that's part of this whole kind of thing. You live with your parents, just different parts of the complex here. He goes into his mother's living space, and apparently Noah is there. Maybe he and his wife had sex. Do they, they were both drinking wine? You know, maybe that was preparatory to that, or maybe Noah passed out, or whatever. We don't know. Noah is incapacitated, though, when Ham shows up, and Ham violates his mother. Okay? We have maternal incest. That is the crime.
Now, you ask, "Well, how does that explain the cursing of Canaan?" It actually does. The maternal incest view is the only view that actually has a coherent explanation for the cursing of Canaan instead of Ham. You say, "How does it go?" This way: Canaan was the product of the incestuous union. The passage tells us twice, sort of proleptically, telegraphs the fact that "Ham was the father of Canaan" with Genesis, you know, verses 18 and 22. There, Genesis 9, by cursing Canaan, Noah telegraphs to everyone, "Canaan will not become the inheritor of family leadership. He was excluded because his birth was illegitimate and the result of Ham's attempt to usurp his own position as leader of the family." Noah is angry because Ham is, to use biblical or King James language here, Ham is raising up competitive seed through his father's wife with the intent of taking control of the family and then passing it on to his illegitimate son, Canaan. Now, there is strong scriptural precedent and ancient Near Eastern precedent, but we're going to stick to the scriptural precedent for this idea. Reuben did this with Bilhah in Genesis 35:22, Genesis 49:3 and 4. But the even better examples are when you get to the monarchy, because then you have a real issue of succession. So in 2 Samuel 12:8, we have an account where David, to legitimize his position, he took Saul's wives and concubines. God, this is right after the Bathsheba thing. I'll just go back up to verse 7, where Nathan is scolding David. After his little parable about the ewe lamb, Nathan said to David, in verse 7, "You are the man! Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: 'I anointed you king over Israel, I delivered you out of the hand of Saul, I gave you your master's house and your master's wives into your arms, and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah. And if this were too little, I would add to you as much more.'" He's given it to David here, basically saying, "Look, you know, God's saying, you know, I, through the prophet, brought, I made you king. I made you king." And this was part, in the culture, this is part of the culture. This is how you solidify your dynasty. You have sexual relations with the competitor, with, with their wives and concubines. This is what you do. Now, this was done to David later on by Absalom. And there's an infamous scene in 2 Samuel 16, in verses 20 through 23. This is the scene that's kind of a notorious scene in the Old Testament, where Absalom publicly does this to David's wives and concubines. I'll just read the passage. "Then Absalom said to Ahithophel, 'Give your counsel. What shall we do?' Ahithophel said to Absalom, 'Go into your father's concubines whom he has left to keep the house, and all Israel will hear that you have made yourself a stench to your father, and the hands of all who are with you will be strengthened.' So they pitched a tent for Absalom on the roof, and Absalom went into his father's concubines at the sight of all Israel." Again, he does this because he's usurping David as king. He's usurping David's office. Later, in 2 Kings 2, David has this happened to him again. Are, almost remember when David was old, they gave him a concubine named Abishag to keep him warm, you know, because he was old. Like, hey, and she sleeps with the king. And then Adonijah, another son, had a serious backing in 2 Kings chapter 2, and in verses 13 through 25, Adonijah tries to take David's concubine sexually. Again, this is what you do to solidify this dynastic transition. This is again, as part of Israelite culture, part of patriarchal culture before that. And so again, this is, this is something that when we read Genesis 9, Ham, by doing this, is laying claim to the leadership of the family, and he is going to have, you know, this particular son, again, in this view, take over. And Noah says, "Forget it. I'm going to exclude Canaan. He is going to be a servant to all of the brothers." So he is cursed. This is why Canaan gets cursed. It is a second-handed punishment of Ham, but it's, it's a really devastating one because Canaan is going to outlive Ham. That's why Canaan becomes the target because he is illegitimate.
Now, let me read a little bit from Bergsma and Han's article on this point. They say, "The objection has been raised that verses 24 and 25 imply that Noah pronounced the curse on Canaan immediately." And it's, it feels like a chronological disconnect. Like Noah sees what what happened and he says, "You know, I'm gonna curse Canaan." Well, the kid hadn't even been born. They don't even know that it has, Noah's wife is pregnant. So it feels a little odd. And this is the objection, you know. So the objection is raised that verses 24 and 25 imply that Noah pronounced the curse on Canaan immediately. Therefore, the nine months necessary for him to be born, according to the maternal incest theory, that just doesn't sound right. But the narrator may have simply compressed the chronology at this point, as he does elsewhere. After all, Genesis 5:32, which reads, "After Noah was 500 years old, Noah became the father of Shem, Ham, and Japheth," should not be taken to mean that Noah's wife bore triplets shortly after his 500th birthday. In other words, you have to read that into it. So sometime after Noah was 500 years old, he has three boys. There's no hint in the text that they're triplets, is the point. So you can have these kind of comments, especially, you know, in, in Genesis, to be honest with you. In narrating family history, it doesn't include all the events and be a totally exhausted, you know, chronology of events. That's their point here. So here they're saying, "Look, this isn't really a good objection to the maternal incest idea." This comment about, you know, is this, this supposition, probably a better way to say it, this supposition that Noah wakes up and just starts cursing the kid, you know, he doesn't even know she's pregnant yet, it's just an added detail. Again, that because of what happened here, Canaan's is gonna get cursed.
Now, to wrap up the episode, if you want more, you know, like sort of, you know, objections and their answers, you know, to this kind of thing, you can go read the article. The, the maternal incest view, I would say this, it's not a perfect argument. In other words, it's not gonna, gonna answer like everything with the kind of precision that you would wish for. But personally, I think that this view, again, this option for understanding what happens between Noah and Ham and Canaan in, in Genesis 9, I think this view is far and away the most coherent understanding of the sin of Ham and the cursing of Canaan. Frankly, none of the other traditional views has the same explanatory power, especially when it comes to why Canaan is the target. So I think, but the maternal incest view is the, the best view. And I'm giving you the article if you want to read it, and they do a good job interacting with the other, other views. So I've distilled the information here. But the key to it is to recognize the idiom "to see nakedness" and "to uncover nakedness." They're the same idiom, or they're different idioms. They're almost the same, but they're different idioms, very similar idioms for the same idea: to have sex with. And if you actually go to where "uncover nakedness" is most often and most thoroughly used in the biblical text, you find out it's not used of a homosexual violation or a homosexual relationship. It's consistently the idea that to see or uncover your father's nakedness, that's the language of Genesis 9. "Ham saw the nakedness of his father." That this language actually refers to having sexual relations with the woman who belongs to that particular man, in this case, the father. And if you, if you see that and you recognize it, this is by far and away, I think the best view because it honors the Hebrew idiom and it is able to explain why Canaan is the target of Noah's anger.
Mike, what can you tell us about this passage or, you know, the sin of Ham being used to promote slavery?
Yeah, well, it was part of sort of a matrix of ideas, a complex of ideas used in Europe and of course, America, you know, to justify, you know, targeting the, the Negro race, the Hamitic races, and then subjugate them to slavery. Then, of course, the real hard part of that is Ham isn't cursed. He is not cursed in the passage. And so for anyone, I mean, there's lots of reasons why that justification of slavery is ridiculous. And frankly, other biblical arguments to justify slavery are pretty dumb. And some of them, I'll just be bluntly honest, some of them depend on truly bad exegesis. I have a whole lecture that I, I call "Biblical Racism." I gave this in Missouri over a year ago when we went for an Unseen Realm event. Plus, you know, there were other topics that people wanted to hear about, and this is one of them. And it derives from the whole problem of, in the Age of Discovery in Europe, I'll try to keep this really short, but in the Age of Discovery in Europe, and when Europeans were crossing the Atlantic and going to other parts of the world, they were finding humans in lands that aren't mentioned in the Bible. Like, "Hey, what, what is this place? It's, it's not part of what the Bible says the world is," you know, the nations of the world in Genesis 10. And again, they were, they were dark-skinned, you know, darker than the white Europeans. And so to, to answer people thought they were answering this whole problem of, "How do we get human beings in other parts of the world that aren't in the Bible?" They came up with theories about other races besides the Adamic race. There was co-Adamicism, you know, other humans besides, you know, alongside Adam, other humans before Adam. And it was part of answering the long ages with this is this time in history, the 1500s, 1600s, 1700s, 1800s. You know, there's all sorts of things going on in the Age of Discovery. You're discovering new, new lands, human beings in these new lands, you're discovering, you know, ancient texts and having them deciphered, Sanskrit, cuneiform, Egyptian, all this stuff that have alternative histories, alternative stories of human origins. Okay? It's just a, you know, you have geology is becoming a science at this point, you know, talking about the earth being millions of years old. You have Darwin in the mid, mid-19th century. You have a bunch of forces that are converging, and out of that came some really truly bad Bible interpretation. And the racial issue is one component of that. And this passage in Genesis 9 was used as part of the alternate Adamic humanity answer to how we get these other people. And surely the Europeans are the race that is the most close to Adam because we inherited the Bible, we inherited the Judeo-Christian worldview, we inherited the really, what what used to be the Roman Empire, which was Christianized. So all these sort of non sequitur leaps of logic kind of concatenate together into racial theory. And you, and people who went to Genesis 9, said, "Ham, where did his ancestor, you know, they're already done there in Africa." You know, well, look, Ham was just awful. And of course, assuming it, this sounds unbelievable, but people just don't read the text. They assumed that Ham, it's very clear he committed a crime. But then they talked about the fact that Ham is cursed, and he deserves to be in bondage and slavery. Well, Ham never gets cursed in the passage. But it doesn't matter. And it didn't matter, you know, they had their theories, and that was good enough. They had what they thought were their biblical answers to these issues. "And don't mess with me, I have the answer. Now, I get to keep, you know, my, the integrity of the Bible because we got to find all this other stuff in the Bible, or else we have to just junk the Bible, you know, we got to, we got to come up with answers for all the questions that these new discoveries are throwing at us." And so they did terrible Bible interpretation. This is where the Lost Tribes of Israel stuff is born in the same, again, the hotbed of ideas. It's just truly awful in all sorts of ways, not only intellectually nonsensical, but we all know where the racial thing, you know, what the terrible stuff that created. So yeah, yeah, this gets used a lot. There are whole, you know, books on on how this, this passage is 9 was used to justify this. Some, some will also say, "Cain, you know, this whole thing about the Mark of Cain, well, that must have been blackness, really, you know, okay, sounds good to be, let's go with that, you know, that he's marked and cursed and that justifies slavery too." Can you get some truly bad Bible interpretation? By interpretation actually matters, folks. It has mattered in the history of Western civilization, and the slavery issue unfortunately is probably Exhibit A on how tragic ideas can extend from bad Bible interpretation.
Yeah, that's pretty ridiculous though, to justify slavery with that.
Yeah, but, you know, that to try to be fair, you know, people came up with with again, just awful ideas, ridiculous interpretations that have no basis in the reality of the text taken in some context. But many of them, they weren't motivated by hate. I mean, there were, there were racial hate mongers that seized upon these things and then used them to justify slavery. But a lot of other people thought that that they had to go this route to to keep their faith, to keep, to keep that, "We got to find this stuff in the Bible somewhere. We got to interpret the Bible somehow to account for this, otherwise we can't look at it as true." So, so for many people, it wasn't a question of, "Oh, I hate blacks, you know, let's go put them in bondage." No, then the question was, "Well, okay, our leadership, our pastors, our scholars are telling us this is how we need to read our Bible here, and, you know, is the Bible still correct?" And, you know, that's just unfortunate. If you're one of these lesser races, you know, God be with you, you know, just, you know, it was that kind of thing. So there's, it's sort of a passive and then a more active, you know, hate thing going on. It wasn't, it wasn't all, all the same thing. It's just unfortunate. It's unconscionable. And at the end of the day, that it's, it's history. That this is, this is the path, these are the paths that you, you go. We can lay a lot of, of the slavery issue at the feet of people doing bad Bible interpretation. That's just a demonstrable fact. As it's uncomfortable to some that it might be that it's true, it's true.
Yeah, that's pretty ridiculous though, to justify slavery with that.
Yeah, but, you know, that to try to be fair, you know, people came up with with again, just awful ideas, ridiculous interpretations that have no basis in the reality of the text taken in some context. But many of them, they weren't motivated by hate. I mean, there were, there were racial hate mongers that seized upon these things and then used them to justify slavery. But a lot of other people thought that that they had to go this route to to keep their faith, to keep, to keep that, "We got to find this stuff in the Bible somewhere. We got to interpret the Bible somehow to account for this, otherwise we can't look at it as true." So, so for many people, it wasn't a question of, "Oh, I hate blacks, you know, let's go put them in bondage." No, then the question was, "Well, okay, our leadership, our pastors, our scholars are telling us this is how we need to read our Bible here, and, you know, is the Bible still correct?" And, you know, that's just unfortunate. If you're one of these lesser races, you know, God be with you, you know, just, you know, it was that kind of thing. So there's, it's sort of a passive and then a more active, you know, hate thing going on. It wasn't, it wasn't all, all the same thing. It's just unfortunate. It's unconscionable. And at the end of the day, that it's, it's history. That this is, this is the path, these are the paths that you, you go. We can lay a lot of, of the slavery issue at the feet of people doing bad Bible interpretation. That's just a demonstrable fact. As it's uncomfortable to some that it might be that it's true, it's true.
Mike, a thousand years from now, when people are listening to this podcast, how are they going to interpret when I say that this show is "uncovering the Bible's negative hot potato"?
Well, no, maybe maybe there'll be more biographical information about you on the internet, then they'll just read that and say, "Okay, we understand now." So, so basically, we've got to, we've learned two things here. We, we have a new slogan, "Uncovering the Bible's Nakedness," and the, we just didn't, we just say something about doing bad stuff with the Bible? Yeah. And the code word is "complicated." Yeah. Yeah. Anytime I say something to say "hot potato," that's alright. Okay. Alright, now we're our new little, I don't know, this meme, the right word there, I don't know. Okay. So if I get out of line, just say "hot potato," then okay. Let the guys translate to add them, you can figure it out. But don't deal with that. Right. Right.
All right, Mike. Well, next week, we're going to do another Q&A. And then with that, I just want to thank everybody for listening to the Naked Bible podcast. God bless.
[Music] Thanks for listening to the Naked Bible Project. To support this podcast, visit www.nakedbibleblog.com to learn more about Dr. Heiser's other websites and blogs, go to www.drmsh.com.
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