Fear No Fear

(All scripture from the World English Bible, ebible.org, all rights reserved)

“Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his youngest son had done to him. He said, “Canaan is cursed. He will be a servant of servants to his brothers.” He said, “Blessed be Yahweh, the God of Shem. Let Canaan be his servant. May God enlarge Japheth. Let him dwell in the tents of Shem. Let Canaan be his servant.””
(Genesis 9:24-27)

Once Noah knew what had happened while he had been ‘asleep’, he acted. There are those who say he couldn’t curse Ham because God had already blessed Ham (Genesis 9:1), and so he chose to curse Ham’s son. But I think in light of what Ham did, Noah cursed the result of the union so that the ungodly act would not spread as an ideal of what to do. The line of Canaan was certainly an ungodly people. And the prophesied result came to pass when the Land was occupied by the Israelites and many Canaanites were forced into indentured service.

There are those scholars who see the book of Genesis more as a myth than a record of what actually happened. They are of the opinion Moses wrote this story as a justification for what the Israelites were about to do to the Canaanites when they conquered the Land.

The sage Steinsaltz writes: ‘Noah awoke from his wine, and knew. Noah was not so drunk that when he woke up he had no memory of what had happened in his drunken stupor. While intoxicated, he behaved abnormally and was unaware of his actions, but once he sobered up, he was able to recall what his youngest son, Ham, or his grandson, Canaan, had done to him.‘