Naked Bible 159: Noah’s Nakedness, the Sin of Ham, and the Curse of Canaan

The episode of Noah’s drunkenness in Genesis 9 has long befuddled interpreters. One of Noah’s sons, Ham, commits some heinous crime against his father. Oddly, though, Ham is not the one cursed by his father. Instead, Ham’s son Canaan bears the wrath of Noah. This episode explores the traditional solutions to the interpretive confusion and offers an alternative based on recent research in the Hebrew text. Sources: John Sietze Bergsma and Scott Walker Hahn, “Noah’s Nakedness and the Curse on Canaan,” Journal of Biblical Literature 124:1 (2005): 25-40