78 QUESTIONS YOU NEVER THOUGHT TO ASK ABOUT SEX IN THE BIBLE
by Les Aron Gosling, Messianic Rebbe
Copyright © BRI 1996 Revised 2000
All Rights Reserved Worldwide
NOTE: THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION IS FOR EMOTIONALLY MATURE ADULTS ONLY. WE SHALL ADD QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS TO THE LIST OVER THE NEXT FEW WEEKS
Question 76: Why was Canaan cursed for Ham's supposed homosexual rape of his father, Noah?
"And God blessed Noah and his sons and said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply and replenish [repopulate] the earth...And the sons of Noah that came out of the ark, were Shem, and Ham, and Japheth: and Ham is the father of Canaan. These are the three sons of Noah, and from them the entire earth was repopulated. And Noah began to be a vinedresser, and he planted a vineyard and drank of the wine, and became a drunk; and he was uncovered within his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brothers outside. And Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father: and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father's nakedness. And Noah awoke from his drunken stupor, and knew what his younger son had done to him. And he cried, Cursed be Canaan, a slave of slaves shall he be to his brothers" (Gen 9.1,18-25).
Essentially, this story tells of Ham's sin against Noah and the cursing by Noah of Ham's fourth son Canaan. After whatever happened to Noah, Ham experienced acute disgrace. We have already seen that it was the custom of the period to take oaths by handling the male genitals and therefore it was not the mere viewing of Noah's penis that constituted Ham's sin, and the implementing of Canaan's curse (Gen 47.29).
So what happened to Noah? Certainly it was not homosexual rape! Simply put, Ham castrated his father. He did this in order to secure fully one-third of the planet for himself and his descendants. By accomplishing this he prevented Noah from having any more children. Noah, in turn, responded in a curse upon Ham's fourth child, Canaan. (Remember, Noah had three sons and was prevented from having a fourth.)
Rashi, an early Jewish sage, had this to say in his paraphrase of the event: "You have brought it about that I cannot bear a fourth son to serve me; cursed, therefore, be your fourth son to serve under the descendants of these elder ones upon whom the duty of serving me will devolve from now on" (Commentary on Gen 9.25).
In ancient mythology the god Kronus (Time) brings about an abrupt conclusion all things which have had a beginning. He is described as the monster who devoured his family (Bullfinch's Mythology). We know that Kronus reduced his father Uranus to impotency (Larousse, Encyclopaedia of Mythology, 90) by the terrible act of castration with a sickle at the instigation of his mother. He cast the bleeding genitals into the ocean (ibid, 88). He thus became the head of a new dynasty, securing for himself a large portion of the earth as his possession. We see in this pagan account the story of Noah emasculated by Ham (Gen 9.18-25).
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