Warning: Adult Content
After the Day of Atonement, the Lord instructs the people on what it looks like to live in a holy way. Unsurprisingly, there is a fair amount of instruction about human sexual behavior.
Way back in Genesis 9, something strange happens between Noah and his son Ham:
20 Noah began to be a man of the soil, and he planted a vineyard. 21 He drank of the wine and became drunk and lay uncovered in his tent. 22 And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brothers outside.23 Then Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it on both their shoulders, and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father. Their faces were turned backward, and they did not see their father's nakedness. [Genesis 9:20-23]
What does that mean? What happened there?
Well, as so often in the Bible, you have to read on (and on and on) to find out. And in Leviticus 18, we finally get some insight.
6 “None of you shall approach any one of his close relatives to uncover nakedness. I am the Lord. 7 You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father, which is the nakedness of your mother; she is your mother, you shall not uncover her nakedness. 8 You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father's wife; it is your father's nakedness. [Leviticus 18:6-8]
It’s obvious as the passage continues that “uncover the nakedness of” or “seeing the nakedness of” is a euphemism for sexual intercourse.
So, when Genesis describes Ham as “seeing the nakedness of his father” it is telling us that Ham took advantage of his father’s drunkenness and, in an attempt to assert dominance and usurp his father’s place, had sexual relations with his mother. (When Absalom attempts to overthrow his father, King David, he has sexual relations with his father’s concubines out in the open so as to show his dominance over his father. A nasty, nasty episode—1 Samuel 16:20-22.) This explanation of the event with Ham also makes sense of Noah’s reaction, when he curses not Ham, but Ham’s son, Canaan:
24 When Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done to him, 25 he said,
“Cursed be Canaan;
a servant of servants shall he be to his brothers.”
This part of Leviticus is no one’s favorite passage of the Bible, but it is important, because it teaches us two things:
How we use our bodies matters to God;
And God cares enough to provide us clear boundaries that we transgress at our peril.
