The sin of Ham

Someone asked the question:

“What was Ham’s sin when he saw Noah naked?”

This is an interesting question, and over the centuries, there had been various explanations. I’ll share the explanation that I find the most logical and most compatible with all the evidence, but keep in mind that not everyone agrees with this view.

Short answer

The short answer is: Ham committed incest, and Canaan (Ham’s son) is also Ham’s younger brother.

Long anwer

The question is part of today’s reading (3 Jan 2022), Gen 9, specifically the passage Gen 9:18–27. All Bible verses are quoted from the ESV. The rest of this page will give the more detailed answer.

Observations

We start with a few observations from the passage:

1. This incident happened after the flood.
2. Gen 9:18 Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, Japheth. Though we should know that this is not necessarily their birth order (as the Bible tells us just a few verses later in Gen 9:24), because quite often, the most important person is named first (Shem, in this case, because Shem’s descendants eventually leads to king David, then Jesus). Also, it seems to be a pattern throughout: the first-born is never chosen by God for carrying out his plan of salvation.
3. Everyone on earth, from after the flood until today (and beyond), were the descendants of Shem, Ham, and Japheth. This includes us! So in a sense, everyone on earth is related. We really are one big family!
4. Gen 9:20 Noah planted a vineyard. We should point out that this didn’t happen immediately after leaving the ark. It takes several years to cultivate a vineyard, so this incident happened a minimum of three to five years after the flood, probably longer.
5. Gen 9:21 From his vineyard, Noah produced wine, drank the wine, and got really drunk.
6. Gen 9:22 Ham “saw the nakedness of his father,” and told Shem and Japheth.
7. Gen 9:23 Shem and Japheth walked backwards into their father’s tent and “covered the nakedness of their father.” They didn’t “see their father’s nakedness.”
8. Gen 9:24 Noah found out “what his youngest son did.” From this, we now know that Ham is Noah’s youngest.
9. Gen 9:25 Noah placed a curse on Canaan (the son of Ham). Canaan will be “a servant of servants” to his brothers.
10. Gen 9:26–27 Similarly, Noah blessed his other two sons Shem and Japheth.
11. The narrator emphasised Ham is the father of Canaan (at Gen 9:18b and Gen 9:22). It’s like he won’t let us forget where Canaan came from. We also should know that the Pentateuch (the five books of Moses, what we have in our Bibles as the first five books from Genesis to Deuteronomy) was written for the generation that left Egypt and eventually settled in Canaan (as described in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Joshua). The people living in Canaan were, of course, Canaanites, who were the descendants of Ham’s son Canaan. So the narrator is telling the Israelites that when you go into Canaan and encounter all thse people, you should know that they are the descendants of Canaan, the son of Ham, the grandson of Noah.

There are several other questions that we can ask as well:

1. What exactly did Ham do that so upset his father (Gen 9:24)?
2. Ham was the one who sinned, so why didn’t Noah curse Ham, but instead cursed Ham’s son Canaan?
3. Whatever Ham did, it didn’t seem to be very proper or acceptable. Why did he share that with his brothers?
4. Why did Ham do what he did? What’s his reason?
5. Why the repeated reminder that Ham is Canaan’s father?

Understanding the passage

Most of this passage is fairly easy to understand, but we need to know what “saw the nakedness” means, because it doesn’t mean what we think it means; the phrase is actually an euphemism for something else.

Two passages from Leviticus help us understand what “saw the nakedness” means.

Lev 18:6ff (“ff” means 18:6 and the following verses) The whole of Lev 18 is about unlawful sexual relations. In Lev 18:3, God tells the Israelites that they “must not do as they do in the land of Egypt where you have been living, and you must not do as they do in the land of Canaan into which I am about to bring you.” What do the people of Egypt and Canaan do? They practice sexual relations that God forbids. These relations are listed starting at Lev 18:6, and there we see a whole pile of “uncover nakedness.” Specifically, “uncovering the nakedness of your father” is refering to the “nakedness of your mother,” etc.

Lev 20:17 This verse tells us that “seeing someone naked” and “uncovering someone’s nakedness” both mean the same thing. The start of this verse tells us what this thing is: “takes his sister”, i.e., have sexual relations with his sister (whether she’s the daughter of his father or mother).

Lev 20:20–21 Further down in Lev 20:20, it tells us that if a man has sexual relations with his uncle’s wife, he has “uncovered his uncle’s nakedness.” And similarly in Lev 20:21, if a man takes his brother’s wife, he has “uncovered his brother’s nakedness.” Note that in both cases, it’s not the woman’s nakedness that was uncovered, but the corresponding man’s nakedness (either the uncle or the brother). So this also implies that when a man uncovers another man’s nakedness, it does not mean they had homosexual relationship with each other. Rather, it means the man who did the uncovering had heterosexual relations with the other man’s wife (either aunt or sister in-law, in this case).

From all these verses, we see that uncovering the nakedness of someone and seeing the nakedness of someone mean the same thing: to have sexual relations. Furthermore, uncovering the nakedness of a close relative (uncle, brother) means having sexual relations with that relative’s wife.

Ham, Canaan, and the curse

So from all this, we can deduce that this is what Ham did: he had sexual relations with his mother (he “saw his father’s nakedness”). This is, of course, incest, and forbidden by God.

We can go one step further, and say that Canaan is the result of this incest. I.e., Ham’s son Canaan is Ham’s younger brother, because Ham and Canaan had the same mother. This explains why Noah cursed Canaan, because Canaan is the product of a very improper relationship between his son Ham and Noah’s wife.

There might also be another reason for the curse, and this might tie in with why Ham did this thing, and why he shared it with his brothers. In OT days, to take over leadership of a family or a country, you “possess” that person’s wife (or wives). We see this in Gen 35:22 (Jacob’s son Reuben “went and lay with Bilhah his father’s concubine”), where Reuben wanted to assert his authority as the first-born. Another example is king David’s son Absalom, who publicly had sexual relations with king David’s concubines to show that he is now taking over from David and is in control (2 Sam 16:20–23). King David himself took all of Saul’s concubines when he became king (2 Sam 12:8).

Maybe Ham wanted to assert himself as the family clan’s leader (remember that Ham is the youngest, so he would likely not become the family’s leader). By sleeping with his father’s wife, he is forcing a takeover of the family’s leadership. This is why he told his brothers, because he wanted them to know that he is now the boss.

When Noah found out what Ham did, and realised that Canaan (born from his wife) is fathered by Ham, he cursed Canaan, to ensure that Ham, and Ham’s son Canaan, will not take over the family’s leadership.

When Ham’s brother heard what Ham did, they went backwards into the tent to cover up their mother (“covered the nakedness of their father.”) They didn’t approve of what Ham did. Maybe they even told their father, and that’s how Noah found out about the incident and about Canaan. I.e., Noah realised that his wife is pregnant not by himself, but by his own son Ham.

One final thing: why the repeated emphasis to say Ham is the father of Canaan? Probably because Ham had four sons: Cush, Egypt, Put, and Canaan (see Gen 10:6). Canaan is likely the youngest, and all the sons were born after the flood. Cush is the ancestor of the country known to the ancient Greeks as Ethiopia (southern Egypt), Egypt is obvious, Put is the ancestor of Libya and neighbouring areas, and finally, Canaan is basically the promised land. The narrator is telling his readers that the place you left (Egypt), and the place where God is bringing you to (Canaan) are both inhabitted by Ham’s descendants, and they both practice sexual relations that are detestable to God. Don’t be like them!

Things to learn

There are many strange incidents in the Bible, some of which we cannot really explain. We trust the Bible as the word of God, and since we are not God, it’s not surprising that some of his words might not be understandable to us. It’s the height of pride to say that we must understand everything in the Bible.

This incident with Ham, especially the curse on Canaan, was (and probably still is) used by many (even many Christians) to justify racism and slavery, especially towards people of African descent. This is because they wilfully misread the Bible. Their rationale is that the Africans are Ham’s descendants (Cush, Egypt, Put, all located in Africa), and since Ham is cursed and is to be servants of Shem and Japheth, it’s perfectly fine to see Africans as servants and slaves (not just servants, but servants of servants as seen in Gen 9:25). What they seem to have conveniently missed is that it was Canaan who was cursed, not Ham. Of course, many racist people just turn a blind eye to this inconvenient fact.

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References

Here are some books and papers that advocate the view expressed above.

Bergsma, John Sietze, and Scott Hahn. “Noah’s Nakedness and the Curse on Canaan (Genesis 9:20-27).” Journal of Biblical Literature 124, no. 1 (2005): 25–40.

Heiser, Michael S. “Uncovering the Curse of Canaan. (I Dare You Not to Bore Me with the Bible).” Bible Study Magazine 11, no. 4 (May 1, 2019): 8–9.

There are many others, of course, and there are also many that advocate other explanations. An example is the NAC (New American Commentary), which suggested that Ham showed disrespect to his father Noah, not just in seeing Noah literally drunk and naked in the tent, but in Ham’s “outspoken delight at his father’s disgraceful condition.” (p. 419)

Mathews, K. A. Genesis 1-11:26. Vol. 1A. The New American Commentary. Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1996.