Curse of Ham
Leviticus 18:8 - The nakedness of thy father's wife shalt thou not uncover: it is thy father's nakedness.
Leviticus 20:11 - And the man that lieth with his father's wife hath uncovered his father's nakedness: both of them shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.
Hello everyone, I'm sure your thinking to yourself why I started off this post with these two verses from the bible (KJ version of the bible to be exact). Well I'll tie it all together in a minute, but lets take a closer look at the verses shall we. The two verses seem to be talking about the same thing but only Leviticus 20:11 takes it a step further and deals out the harsh punishment for breaking God's command. That's one thing I love about the Bible, no not the punishment...but it always takes the time to teach and after teaching it always seems to review. What I mean by this is simply this, the bible always seems to throw what it wants to teach you in your face and either a few versus or chapters later, it makes sure you were paying attention and retouches on the same subject. So what am I getting to with these to verses, well lets take a look at the common theme of these two verses. From where I'm sitting the common theme is simply what God holds as sexual perversion and that brings me to point where I tie things together.
Genesis 9:22 - And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his brethren without.
Now if were to take the same interpretation from Leviticus of seeing the nakedness of ones father and apply it to genesis, we get a whole new meaning to the story of Noah. So can it possibly be true that, Ham had slept with his own mother? It wouldn't have to hard for Ham to do so seeing that Noah was to drunk to notice...
Genesis 9:21 - And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent.
Just wait the rabbit hole goes even deeper, as we see in the next verse;
Genesis 9:25 - And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.
Wow Ham sure lucked out there, Noah must have thrown that "Curse" a little to hard cause it flew right over Ham and slapped his son in the back of the head. On the other hand It could be possible that due to God's blessing of Ham that Noah was unable to curse Ham.
Genesis 9:1 - And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.
Was this the reason Noah was unable to curse Ham cause Noah doesn't (as no human does) have the authority to go over God's head and curse what God deems blessed. Or is there something more sinister in play here? Can these verses possibly be hinting that Canaan is the fruit of Ham and his mother's unholy union? If not this, then why place the "Curse" simply on Ham or ask God to remove his blessing and be done with it? Or am I simply over thinking the whole thing and taking the bible to literally? I do find it interesting that ancient commentaries have also debated that "seeing" someone's nakedness meant to have sex with that person. The Babylonian Talmud (c. 500 AD), argues that Ham either castrated his father, or sodomised him which gives thing a very unusual twist. Speaking of unusual twists when considering the Genealogies of Genesis 5, it becomes evident that the standard form of recording the offspring of each firstborn son, is to name that son and then say of the father of that son, "and he had other sons and daughters". The obvious implication is that such and such had a firstborn son (who is named) and then he lived a certain amount of years, "and he had other sons and daughters." Each paragraph reads the same, or has the same format, until we get to Noah. I guess no matter what I present for my case that some things are just not meant to be answered and are doomed to remain so. That's what I guess people mean when they refer to "Mysteries of the Bible" for this I honestly think can be categorized just that. Though I do want to leave you on this note to prove my case of why I think that my interpretation is correct: No less than 17 times in Leviticus 18 alone Moses uses the phrase “uncover the nakedness of” as a euphemism for sexual intercourse, and particularly for the sin of incest. Also the phrase more and likely has the same meaning in Genesis 9 that it has in Leviticus, for both books were written by the same author around the same time period. Well I hope you enjoyed this post and that you'll stay tuned for those to come, it's been a pleasure sharing my take on this...until next time.