BEMA 5: A Misplaced Curse (2016)

Transcription Status

14 Apr 22 — Initial public release

9 Mar 22 — Transcript approved for release

A Misplaced Curse

Brent Billings: Welcome to the BEMA Podcast with Marty Solomon. I’m his co-host, Brent Billings. Today, we’re talking about Noah’s departure from the ark and the tragedy that ensues. Marty, I’m picking up a theme with what we keep doing here, so I’m just going to get right to it and say you probably got some problems for us, right?

Marty Solomon: I do have some problems. Let me throw it back to you before I start going through them. Do you find any problems when you look at this story?

Brent: Well, there’s a couple of weird things. I don’t understand the order of how the sons are listed because there’s his youngest son stuff, and I thought that they’re supposed to be listed from oldest to youngest because of the firstborn thing, but they’re mixed up.

Marty: Right. They’re listed… you have Shem, and then Ham, and then Japheth. The way that they come out of the ark, you have it in the way that they’re listed, but then later, we’re told when they do their table of nations in the next chapter, they’re listed in the opposite order. We’re told that Japheth is the eldest brother later in the story. It’s weird that the order is mixed up. I think we’ll come back to that. I contemplated doing that in this podcast, but I don’t want to muddy the waters, so I’m going to save that little treasure for—

Brent: We’re still saving the genealogies, right?

Marty: Oh, yes, I believe we are. I believe we’re going to save the genealogies.

Brent: We’re saving those.

Marty: We’re going to save this little tidbit about Shem, and Japheth, and Ham and their birth order I think for a little bit later, because we found something pretty cool, the disciples and I, as we were wrestling with the story this week. We’ll save that and come back to that later. What else you got?

Brent: Well, there’s the whole vineyard thing. This is the first time a vineyard has ever been mentioned in the text and Noah has already figured out how to make wine out of it.

Marty: Okay, we’ve got the “law of first mention” going on here, which you’re referencing, which we haven’t talked about on the podcast yet. We’re going to later, but that’s a principle. I think you’ll have to call it the “principle of”… principle.

Brent: Principle. Yes.

Marty: “Principle of First Mention.”

Brent: Laws too. It doesn’t always work, right?

Marty: It’s not always there. It’s not always true, but one of the most commonly asked Jewish hermeneutical principles is, “Where does this word first show up?” You’ve noticed that quite a few words show up in the scriptures for the first time in the story. The idea is that when you find something in its first mention, that’s how you’re going to understand that word. Whenever we find vineyards, we’re going to come back to this story and be able to think, “Okay, I’m supposed to understand this concept and what the story is talking about.” It should be rooted, no pun intended, in this idea of the story of Noah. We’ll hold on to that. We’ll come back to that at some later point as well.

Brent: The other question is, what’s the big deal about Noah being naked in his own tent? Isn’t that a place where you can do that? It’s your tent. You have to change clothes at some point. Maybe he just—

Marty: I like that. I like that.

Brent: I don’t know.

Marty: Okay, we’ll come back to that as well, and we’ll come back to that one today, even.

Brent: All right.

Marty: Any other problems you got?

Brent: Well, at this point, it seems like there aren’t a whole lot of people around. When Noah wakes up, how did he find out about who did what?

Marty: Okay, that’s a great question.

Brent: Did he come roaring out of the tent and say, “Hey, what’s going on?”

Marty: Right. Okay. I like that.

Brent: “I’m pretty sure I didn’t fall asleep with this blanket on me, how did it get here?”

Marty: Right. Okay, that’s an excellent question, which will be relevant for today’s discussion. Okay, I’m going to pick up and start reading. We’re halfway through Chapter 9 here. We’re basically going to go 9:18 through the rest of the chapter here. I’m going to read it and maybe we’ll pick up some questions as we go along here. Here we go. The sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Ham was the father of Canaan. These were the three sons of Noah, and from them, came the people who were scattered all over the earth.

I would say, maybe, I don’t have a problem, but I’m noticing here this parenthetical — it’s mentioning Canaan. That’s weird. It’s mentioning that Ham is the father of Canaan. Let’s keep going here. Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded to plant a vineyard. When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent. Ham, the father of Canaan, there’s that phrase again, saw his father’s nakedness and told his two brothers outside, but Shem and Japheth… Okay, let’s stop there. He sees his father. Are there any problems there that you see?

Brent: Why did he go and tell them?

Marty: Right. There’s this weird thing about seeing the nakedness. That’s just weird. He sees his father’s nakedness. Then he goes and tells them. That’s kind of perplexing. One of the things that we’ll find here is that — we’ll talk about that just in a moment here. Let’s keep reading, But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it out across their shoulders, and when they walked in backward and covered their father’s nakedness, their faces were turned the other way, so that they would not see their father’s nakedness. Okay, anything you’re picking up there you’re noticing?

Brent: That’s the same, strange “seeing of nakedness.”

Marty: Right. It’s a repetition of this nakedness idea. It seems like we might have heard that before, but nevertheless. When Noah awoke from his wine, and found out what his youngest son had done to him, he said, ‘Cursed be Canaan, the lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers.’ Now, did you have any problems there?

Brent: It’s interesting. It says he woke from his wine rather than from his sleep.

Marty: Okay, yes.

Brent: I just noticed that. There’s Canaan. Ham’s not even mentioned now. It’s like, “Ham, oh, by the way, Canaan. Ham, oh, by the way, Canaan.” Now Ham is just completely out of the picture.

Marty: Right.

Brent: That curse is for Canaan.

Marty: Yes. Why in the world does Noah curse Canaan, when Ham is the one that’s done something wrong? That is totally weird. What in the world is Noah doing? Why are you mad at your grandson? Be mad at your son. It’s your son. Okay, that’s definitely weird. That’s going to be a huge problem here in the story.

Brent: Well, now I have a question based on what you just said. How do we know that what Ham did is wrong?

Marty: It’s a great question.

Brent: What did he do exactly?

Marty: There’s some kind of allusion in the story that he’s definitely done something. He’s telling the brothers, the brothers immediately respond. There’s something going on there. We’ll definitely come back to that. Let’s finish the story here. He also said, “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem. Make Canaan be the slave of Shem.” He’s just really gone after Canaan here. “May God extend the territory of Japheth. May Japheth live in the tents of Shem, and may Canaan be his slave.” After the flood, Noah lived 350 years. Altogether, Noah lived 950 years. Then he died.

Brent: It was about time, I think.

Marty: It was about time. It’s been a long life for Mr. Noah.

Brent: It’s a very long journey.

Marty: That’s right. Now, okay, we had all these questions. One of the things that we noticed, let’s jump back a story. In the flood, we noticed, and I think we hinted at it just a moment ago, as we read through this. We notice in the flood that it was a direct parallel and a retelling of the creation story. We had all the days of creation paralleled, we had Sabbath paralleled, we had a God that knew how to stop creating in story one, and then we had a God who knew how to stop destroying in the story of the floods. We had all these parallels.

If, just by chance, now, this is probably going to be a stretch, right? We’re not going to see this, but if we were to continue the parallels, what would you expect to see next, Brent?

Brent: Well, we should have a garden coming up?

Marty: Oh, we should have a garden.

Brent: There’s some people in the garden, some fruit.

Marty: All right, do we have a guy that comes out of an ark and plants a garden, plants a vineyard? The word there, two connected ideas of vineyard, terraced vineyard, and another kind of vineyard or a garden would be very much the same idea. We have a guy coming out of the ark and creating a garden. You said fruit, so we have Noah tasting of the garden’s fruit and bad things happening. What else do we have?

Brent: Well, nakedness was a pretty big theme?

Marty: Oh, man. Wasn’t there like this huge, just like there was in the story of Adam and Eve, a theme of nakedness. We have another awkward story about nakedness.

Brent: Then a covering of the nakedness later on.

Marty: Oh, I didn’t think about that. You’re absolutely right. There’s a covering of the nakedness. Oh, man.

Brent: I just realized that. I was looking at the text again.

Marty: I love that. Okay. Then the story should end with?

Brent: Some kind of curse.

Marty: Again, we have this curse. We continue to have these parallels back to the creation stories as they’re being told. Just like Noah is a parallel of the creation story, Noah and his vineyard is a parallel to Adam and Eve in the garden. We’ll just hang on to that here for a moment, but let me tell you something that the Midrash teaches about the story. Now, the Midrash, we haven’t really talked about the Midrash directly yet, so we better introduce this idea. The Midrash is an ancient Jewish form of commentary.

In a Western world, the Westerner’s going to exegete the scriptures in the passage, and they’re going to write a commentary about what’s going on in the past. It’s going to be very deductive. It’s going to be very straightforward. As we talked about in our very first introductory podcast, the Easterner doesn’t do this. The Easterner wants to lead you on the process of discovery. Their commentary is not going to be straightforward. Their commentary is not going to be deductive. Their commentary is going to be a very inductive process of discovery. How the Easterner does this is when the Bible teacher believes that he or she has discovered a truth.

What they’re going to do is they’re going to tell a story within the story. Something that we call a midrash. There’s going to be a story within the story that’s going to help you find the same journey, discover the same thing that the teacher has discovered. It’s another version of those treasure maps. Just like a chiasm, a midrash is a commentary that is a treasure map that will lead you to discovery. There is a Jewish midrash about Noah. Now, you brought up this weird phrase about looking upon the nakedness and there’s obviously more going on there.

Culturally, that phrase “to look upon the nakedness” means one of two things. The word look has the idea of “perceive.” It’s not just to see something. It’s actually to perceive it, to understand it. To perceive, not just to see. Now, what this means is when somebody looks and perceives the nakedness, they’re doing more than just looking at it. One of two things is usually meant by this idiom. Either there’s a molestation involved, or in some cases, a castration because they’re seeing and taking. They’re seeing and perceiving. Either molestation or castration, in the ancient Eastern world is what this Hebrew phrase refers to.

Some people, by the way, have taught that to look upon the nakedness means to sleep with their mother. That has been pulled from an idea that’s found in Deuteronomy where in Deuteronomy the author connects the idea of looking upon your father’s nakedness and the Hebrew to the concept of sleeping with your mother. That’s not what the phrase actually refers to. The reason the author is doing that is because to sleep with your mother is to molest your father. The phrase there actually refers directly to either molestation or castration, and then there’s this really weird conversation, it actually becomes very relevant because the Midrash says you’ve got to figure out which one it was.

Was it molestation or castration? The Midrash says, “Oh, well, that’s easy. It was castration.” Which now raises a huge question. You now have to figure out. The Midrash always does this. The Midrash is not trying to directly explain something. The Midrash is being told to raise a whole other set of questions that now you have to answer and you’re going to stumble upon the treasure as you try to answer them. Why castration and not molestation? That is the question the Midrash leaves us with. Why make that arbitrary decision? Are you just picking one of those? There must be something in the Text that alludes to the fact that there’s something going on that would lead us to castration, not molestation.

Now, we just said this story paralleled which story, Brent?

Brent: Genesis 2 and 3.

Marty: The story of Adam and Eve, Now, if you remember, we were going through Genesis 2 and 3 and there was this really awkward paragraph that didn’t belong. Can you remember what that paragraph was?

Brent: The rivers.

Marty: We were going through Genesis 2 and 3 and there was this really weird paragraph in the middle of nowhere about four rivers. You actually made an observation about how one of the rivers had no detail about it.

Brent: Well, the first river had lots of detail and then each successive river had less and less detail and the fourth river had nothing. It was just like, oh, and there it was.

Marty: Just that fourth river. No detail given at all. Now, there are two ways to talk about family trees. One of them is a tree, the idea of a family tree. Often in Jewish imagery, you’ll find that when they’re talking about family and lineage, they’ll talk about it in terms of a tree. An olive tree that represents a family. A myrtle tree. Different kinds of trees. A tree is one image, but another way that you might talk about lineage in terms of image is of a river and its tributaries. A river would symbolize a family line and all of its creeks — and “cricks”, however we say it in the Northwest.

Brent: Well, it depends on how big it is. It can go either way.

Marty: All those tributaries represent those family branches. Now, if these two stories are paralleled, how many rivers were there?

Brent: Four rivers.

Marty: There were four rivers in Genesis 2 and 3. How many sons does Noah have?

Brent: Only three.

Marty: He has three sons. What was the command that God gave Noah when he came out of the ark?

Brent: Something… “be fruitful and multiply.”

Marty: Which also shows up in the Adam and Eve story by the way. Nevertheless, he told him to be fruitful and multiply. Just based on the story and the parallel, we know exactly what’s got to come next. What’s got to happen for Noah?

Brent: He’s going to have another son.

Marty: He’s going to have another son. Now all of a sudden we realize, “Well, there’s a fourth river. There’s going to be a fourth son.” Now we stumble across what the Midrash might be guiding us to. Why does Noah get up and curse not Ham, but Canaan, Ham’s son? I think what’s going on here — I just don’t think — I have a real conviction based on my teaching from Rabbi Fohrman, Noah is bent on revenge. You asked the question, why does he wake up and know that? If the Midrash is right, he wakes up and knows that something has happened because he’s missing something very important. [laughs] He wakes up and he says, “What have you done?”

He comes out and he says, “You have robbed me of my ability to produce more sons as God has commanded me.” He doesn’t say this, but “I am going to rob you of your son. You have in a sense cursed me of my ability, so let me curse you and your son.” This whole story is a story about vengeance and what’s so interesting is — coming off of the heels of the flood story — in the first creation story, we found that God knew when to say enough to its creative power and the story that followed Adam and Eve was a story about Adam and Eve learning how to say enough to their creative power.

Now in the flood, God knew when to say enough about his destructive power and Noah is having to learn the same and so his invitation is the same as we’ve been looking at through this entire story. His invitation is to trust God. His invitation is to not let his desire for vengeance get the best of him. His invitation is to just trust. “Noah, don’t do anything stupid here. Don’t pass on Ham’s mistake to his children and his children’s children.” It’s interesting the curse that Noah uses here. He’s the only human being in scripture to use this curse other than God. God would not be a human being. He’s the only human being to use this curse.

This curse is reserved for God alone and no other human being uses this word for curse except for Noah. Noah is stepping into the role of God, believing that God’s not going to do what ought to be done and Noah has this desire for revenge and vengeance and he takes this curse and he throws it — not even on the one who deserves it — he throws it on the one who doesn’t deserve it and it will be this endless tragedy because all throughout the story, Canaan and his descendants are going to be at odds with the people of God. This story is going to have these eternal repercussions to it. It’s just going to be a horrible tragedy of not knowing when to say enough.

Brent: Now, I don’t think you necessarily meant to do this, but when you were extrapolating Noah’s thoughts a little bit, because Genesis 9 does not say this. It just says, When he awoke from his wine, found out what his youngest son had done, he said, “Cursed be Canaan.” You said one of his thoughts was he wakes up and he is like, “What have you done?” God actually says that in Genesis 3.

Marty: That is correct.

Brent: Obviously, the text doesn’t say that so we don’t know, but is that just another potential? That’s exactly the kind of response I would have if I woke up in a condition, like, “What have you done?”

Marty: Correct.

Brent: I would come out of the tent and I would be a little upset.

Marty: Correct.

Brent: It seems natural that this would be part of Noah’s statement and so is that — that was God’s question to ask in Genesis 3.

Marty: Oh man. That’s a great point. I don’t know. It’s not in the text directly like you pointed out, but man, that’s a great point in those parallels. We’re going to have this story and this is one of the places where we start to get introduced to this concept of forgiveness, which we’re going to come back to a lot. One of the biggest places we’re going to come back to this concept of forgiveness is in the story of Samson or Shimshon as he’s known in the Hebrew. We’ll come back to him later in our study when we get to the book of Judges.

This is why forgiveness is so important to putting the world back together, because it’s the greatest form of trust. When you forgive, you’re trusting that God is in charge of the world. The first step to forgiveness is stopping the madness, stopping the cycle of vengeance. And it’s really truly mimicking the God of the flood story, a God who knows when to stop destroying. What we keep learning here is we keep learning who God is and we keep learning what man is afraid of. Man is going to have a very hard time in these opening chapters of the story, knowing when to say enough, and yet the plea over and over and over again, from the author of Genesis and from God and the narrative is to just trust the story. Don’t lash out in our insecurity, don’t lash out in our fear, don’t lash out in our shame and the things that we think.

This is all pent up in Noah’s shame. He knows he’s supposed to have more kids, and now he can’t. Now he’s full of shame, now he’s full of insecurity because he’s not everything that he wanted to be and knew that he should be. What is he going to do? Is he going to take it out on the next guy or is he just going to know when to say enough and let the world continue down a redemptive path. Unfortunately, the story ends in yet another tragedy. Pretty good.

Brent: Sounds good to me. I think that’s all we got for now. Now, we do have some discussion groups. We’ve got one in Moscow on Tuesday and in Pullman on Wednesday. Marty, I was going to ask for people who have been listening to this for a few weeks now, who don’t live in the Palouse area, would you want to give a few words of encouragement about community?

Marty: Oh, yes, absolutely. We have groups around the country in different pockets and places that start their own discussion groups, and it’s great to listen to a podcast. It’s easy. You plug it in while you’re working out, or you do whatever, you set some time to study aside. But the great thing is when you study the Text together. There are groups here that come together, and obviously, they get to talk to me personally and ask me questions, and many of you listening that aren’t a part of that don’t get to do that, and yet you can still ask questions together, and you can still dig into the Text.

You can still fire, maybe the occasional email and things like that, but the big-ticket, the big thing that really helps, is to be able to… The Jews had a word for a group of people who want to get in and study. It was called a havurah, and the individual is called a haver, and they’re haverim in plural there. They are a group of people that are going to chew it up and wrestle together because you don’t study the text alone.

Like so much of the stuff that I’ve learned, and so much of the stuff that I pass on to you is not stuff that I ever learned on my own. It’s stuff that I learned through the help and the discussion of other people. Every time we study the text together, things get better. Take this podcast, get a group of people together and listen to it, and then come together and have your own discussion groups wherever you live. It’s better together.

Brent: Absolutely. All right, if you want to get a hold of Marty, you can find him on Twitter at @martysolomon. You can find me on Twitter at @eibcb, and you can find more details about the show at bemadiscipleship.com. Thanks again for joining us for the BEMA Podcast and we’ll talk to you again soon.