The Sin of Noah?

[awareness]

Originally Posted by Igzy

It is possible we and many Bible students have had the interpretation of this passage way wrong for many years.

Noah got drunk, naked and was probably hungover. He was so angry and out-of-sorts when he awoke that he did not just curse his son, Ham, who was the one he was mad at, but he cursed Ham's son, Canaan, of whom the Bible records no wrongdoing.

Would any Christian these days excuse that kind of behavior? No way! So why do we excuse Noah?

Interpreters have jumped through hoops for years trying to make sense of this passage, vindicating Noah because Canaan's descendants were, it seems, cursed, becoming the Canaanites whom Israel routed and enslaved. So they seek to find ways to exonerate Noah, ways which in the end don't jibe with the nature of God.

"Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, that they not be discouraged. Col 3:21"

That's the clear, plain word of the New Testament. Noah did just the opposite in the extreme. Yet teachers, over-spiritualizing things, for years have attempted to clear him.

But think about this, and the nastiness of Noah's curse. Imagine if you were a dad yourself and your older father got drunk, did something embarrassing, and finding out you talked about it, got so angry that he went beyond cursing you--he looked you in the eye and cursed your son.

That's some serious nastiness.

What effect would this legacy have on your son? The same thing, to the extreme, would happen to Canaan. He lived his whole life knowing his grandfather, the one who is supposed to love and cherish him, and even the top guy on earth at the time, had cursed him for life. You think it would discourage him and make him bitter? You think it would "provoke him to anger?" You think, knowing he had done nothing wrong, it would turn him against the God his grandfather supposedly represented?

Get out of your hyper-spiritual brain for a minute and just think about it.

You'd better believe it would.

Yes, Noah cursed Canaan. Yes, the curse had effect. But not in the way we have traditionally looked at it. Noah produced the rebel Canaan became by his harsh, reckless words. That's the lesson, I believe.

Fathers, watch what you say and how you say it. By speaking in anger, you may produce the very bad child you think you are trying to prevent.


Obviously, there is an application to Witness Lee which I won't even go into now.

Some great exegesis Igzy. What a realistic way of looking at Noah.

Two things:

1) How did Noah come by divine powers strong enough to curse father and descendants? Seems to me he was under the influence of the wrong spirits for those kinds of powers.

2) Considering this Noah story was written long after Noah, and by those that annihilated and conquered the Canaanites, wouldn't it make sense that the writer had an ax to grind, and reversed engineered the curse, to explain why they had to commit genocide of the Canaanites?

And to add a third thought ... if Noah is an example of Deputy Authority it's an example of Deputy Authority gone wrong. After all, it produced the Canaanites, that had to be slaughtered to take God's "gift" of the Promise Land.