Genesis 9 Study Notes

9:18-19 Beginning with repeated material (5:32; 6:10), the writer launches into a new narrative designed to prepare readers for God’s judgment on the nation of Canaan. The familiar genealogy is extended with the note that Ham was the father of Canaan. At the same time v. 19 prepares readers for chap. 10.

9:20 The parallels continue between Noah and Adam as Noah is now shown to be a farmer (lit man of the soil [Hb ’adamah]) in the new world prepared for him by God.

9:21 As Adam had sinned through the consumption of fruit (3:6), so Noah drank some of the wine and became drunk. After sin entered the world, shattering innocence, nakedness was associated with shame (cp. 2:25; 3:10). In this case Noah brought the shame on himself through his sinful drunkenness. A minimum of two years likely elapsed between vv. 20 and 21 since grapevines must grow that long before they can produce grapes.

9:22 Noah “uncovered himself,” and Ham saw Noah naked. This passage does not say that Ham “uncovered the nakedness of Noah,” which would be a euphemism for perverted sexual activity (Lv 18:6-19). A parent’s sin often becomes a child’s stumbling block (Ex 34:7). In this case, Ham dishonored his father and thus sinned (Ex 20:12; Dt 5:16) in two ways: First, he dishonored his father by staring at his nakedness (Hab 2:15). Second, he increased both his sin and his father’s shame by reporting his father’s condition to others. Later, the law stipulated curses for dishonoring a parent (Ex 21:17; Dt 27:16).

9:23 Shem and Japheth demonstrated their nobler natures by reacting to their father’s condition far differently from Ham. First, they did not look upon their father’s shameful condition. Second, they covered their father’s nakedness, thus ending his shame. Their action parallels God’s clothing of Adam following Adam’s sin (3:21).

9:24-27 When Noah learned what his youngest son had done, he placed the curse on Ham’s son, Canaan, who would be the lowest of slaves to his brothers, that is, the slave of the descendants of Shem and Japheth. This curse on Canaan had prophetic implications. In later centuries the Canaanites, the descendants of Canaan, were pressed into slavery by the Israelites (Jos 17:13; Jdg 1:28-35; 1Kg 9:20-21). This curse does not refer to the descendants of Ham who settled in Africa.

9:28-29 Noah’s 950 years mark him as the third-oldest human in biblical history, behind Methuselah (969 years) and Jared (962 years).