Noach
Genesis 6:9-11:32
Précis: The story of Noah (Hebrew: Noach) and Flood appear in this parasha. Noah, called by God, builds the Ark and collects the animals. It rains for forty days and nights. Noah and his family are saved, and afterwards leave the Ark, build an altar, and make sacrifices to God. God sets a rainbow as a promise not to destroy mankind again. Noah plants a vineyard, makes wine, and becomes drunk. An odd incident takes place with his sons. The story of the Tower of Babel is included in this parasha, and it ends with a genealogy of the ancient peoples of the Bible, concluding with Abram.
Gen. 9:20-27 “And Noah began to be a husbandman, and he planted a vineyard: And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without. 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 wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him. And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. And he said, Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.”
This is the part of the Noah story which was left out of the recent movie (at least I think so; I fell asleep watching it). It’s also part of the story we don’t read to the little kids, who are much more interested in the animals.
These verses tells us that Noah plants a vineyard and gets drunk. His son Ham “saw the nakedness” of Noah and tells his brothers, Shem and Japheth, about it. They carefully cover their father, without “seeing his nakedness.” Noah wakes, and learns what Ham had “done” to him. He curses Ham’s son Canaan (but not Ham), and blesses his other two sons.
To say that the text is hard to decipher is an understatement. So much is left out of the story! Noah, who had been described as being righteous gets drunk at the first opportunity. How did Noah know what happened? Why does he curse Ham’s son and not Ham? Why are Shem and Japheth blessed?
The Sages of course were aware of these problems and offered a variety of explanations. As we’ve learned before, Noah being called “righteous” was considered by some to mean merely that he was righteous compared to everybody else in his time (who were all killed by the Flood). So it’s no real surprise that he planted a vineyard and got drunk (after all, being cooped up with those animals could not have been easy).
We should recall that “seeing the nakedness” of another was a Biblical euphemism for sexual activity. If “seeing the nakedness” By Ham of his father was indeed an act of homosexual incest, that is certainly a horrid sin. By why the curse on his son Canaan, instead of simply Ham himself? Some suggest that this sets the stage for the traditional Biblical view of the Canaanites as depraved and sinful, worthy of destruction when the Israelites seized the territory.
Are Shem and Japheth really heroes here, or did they attempt to “cover up” the crime committed by their father in getting drunk, when instead they should have confronted him(what we might call today an “intervention”). So much is left to our imagination by this tale. It is ambiguous, and life is often ambiguous. I’d suggest that we remain true to our tradition and avoid this part of the story with the little ones. It’s hard enough for us to understand!
