Forbidden Bible Verses — Genesis 9:18-23

The three-year Lectionary that many Catholics and Protestants hear in public worship gives us a great variety of Holy Scripture.

Yet, it doesn’t tell the whole story.

My series Forbidden Bible Verses — ones the Lectionary editors and their clergy omit — examines the passages we do not hear in church. These missing verses are also Essential Bible Verses, ones we should study with care and attention. Often, we find that they carry difficult messages and warnings.

Today’s reading is from the English Standard Version Anglicised (ESVUK) with commentary by Matthew Henry and John MacArthur.

Genesis 9:18-23

The sons of Noah

¹⁸ The sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem, Ham and Japheth. (Ham was the father of Canaan.) ¹⁹ These were the three sons of Noah, and from them came the people who were scattered over the whole earth.

²⁰ Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded^[a] to plant a vineyard. ²¹ When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent. ²² Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father naked and told his two brothers outside. ²³ But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it across their shoulders; then they walked in backwards and covered their father’s naked body. Their faces were turned the other way so that they would not see their father naked.

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Last week’s post addressed the genealogy of Methuselah, the longest lived human being at 969 years. One of his sons was Lamech, the good one rather than the bigamist, and he fathered Noah. The verses ended with Noah becoming the father of Shem, Ham and Japheth at the advanced age of 500+ years.

As we begin today’s verses, the Flood has come and gone, destroying all of what was Adam and Eve’s line. The father of post-Flood humanity is Noah.

We are now in a new world.

MacArthur tells us more (emphases mine):

With this passage, the life of the humanity on the earth begins post-Flood. The great Flood is over which drowned the whole human race except eight souls, which drowned all air-breathing animals on the planet except those that were in the ark. The Flood is over, the water has subsided, the ground is dry, and all the life has come out of the ark.

All God-rejecting sinners have been drowned or buried or destroyed in volcanic eruptions that were a part of the reshaping of the earth during the time of the Flood. All God-rejecting sinners have been swept into eternal judgment, and now there is a new beginning; a fresh, new day dawns for the eight people who make up the entire human race. Fresh on their minds and certainly visible around them is the knowledge of the devastating impact of sin. It literally changed the shape of the face of the earth. It changed life physically. It changed life materially. And also there must have been plenty of evidence around them of death.

And so, they come into a new world. Certainly if there’s anything in their minds, it is that they would do all they could to avoid the kind of devastation that they had just experienced. And there must have been a certain amount of hope and eagerness that perhaps they could approximate some kind of paradise. Maybe they could recover Eden, maybe there was a way that they could come to some kind of utopia. Well, it was not to be. If it were possible to restrain sin, they had every reason to do it. If it were possible to live a righteous life and to have everybody live a righteous life, hopefully those people who had been declared by God to be righteous and thus been spared the judgment, and were few in number – only eight – and were all in the same family, would have a good shot at pulling it off.

The legacy of Adam and Eve’s Original Sin was — and is — evermore until the end of the world:

… one thing didn’t drown in the Flood and that was sin. Sin was riding in the ark, in the nature of Noah, his wife, Shem, Ham, and Japheth and their three wives. And sin survived the Flood in them. It was a new earth, but it was the same old humanity. And when they walked off the ark, sin walked off the ark; and when they stepped into the new world, sin stepped into the new world with them, in them …

And so we learn that what the Bible says is true: sin reigned from Adam, that once Adam sinned, sin became the sovereign of human life; it became the monarch of humanity and carries its potent poison into all peoples and families of the world. And the judgment that God brought about on the face of the earth when He drowned all humanity didn’t drown sin.

The sons who came out of the ark were Shem, Ham and Japheth, with Ham being the father of Canaan (verse 18).

Canaan was a person as well as a place.

From these three sons of Noah came the people scattered over the whole earth (verse 19).

Matthew Henry says:

The names of his sons are again mentioned (v. 18, 19) as those from whom the whole earth was overspread, by which it appears that Noah, after the flood, had no more children: all the world came from these three. Note, God, when he pleases, can make a little one to become a thousand, and greatly increase the latter end of those whose beginning was small.

Noah proceeded — or, as the footnote says, was the first — to plant a vineyard (verse 20).

He started at the beginning, just as Adam did, by working the soil.

Alternatively, Henry posits that Noah was returning to his origins:

The business Noah applied himself to was that of a husbandman, Heb. a man of the earth, that is, a man dealing in the earth, that kept ground in his hand, and occupied it. We are all naturally men of the earth, made of it, living on it, and hastening to it: many are sinfully so, addicted to earthly things. Noah was by his calling led to trade in the fruits of the earth. He began to be a husbandman, that is, some time after his departure out of the ark, he returned to his old employment, from which he had been diverted by the building of the ark first, and probably afterwards by the building of a house on dry land for himself and family. For this good while he had been a carpenter, but now he began again to be a husbandman. Observe, Though Noah was a great man and a good man, an old man and a rich man, a man greatly favoured by heaven and honoured on earth, yet he would not live an idle life, nor think the husbandman’s calling below him. Note, Though God by his providence may take us off from our callings for a time, yet when the occasion is over we ought with humility and industry to apply ourselves to them again, and, in the calling wherein we are called, faithfully to abide with God, 1 Cor 7 24.

When Noah drank some of the wine from his vineyard, he became drunk and lay uncovered — naked — inside his tent (verse 20).

Henry gives us this analysis of Noah, his urge to celebrate the product of his labour, his goodness and his sin:

He planted a vineyard; and, when he had gathered his vintage, probably he appointed a day of mirth and feasting in his family, and had his sons and their children with him, to rejoice with him in the increase of his house as well as in the increase of his vineyard; and we may suppose he prefaced his feast with a sacrifice to the honour of God. If this was omitted, it was just with God to leave him to himself, that he who did not begin with God might end with the beasts; but we charitably hope that it was not: and perhaps he appointed this feast with a design, at the close of it, to bless his sons, as Isaac, ch. 27 3, 4, That I may eat, and that my soul may bless thee. At this feast he drank of the wine; for who planteth a vineyard and eateth not of the fruit of it? But he drank too liberally, more than his head at this age would bear, for he was drunk. We have reason to think he was never drunk before nor after; observe how he came now to be overtaken in this fault. It was his sin, and a great sin, so much the worse for its being so soon after a great deliverance; but God left him to himself, as he did Hezekiah (2 Chron 32 31), and has left this miscarriage of his upon record, to teach us, 1. That the fairest copy that ever mere man wrote since the fall had its blots and false strokes. It was said of Noah that he was perfect in his generations (ch. 6 9), but this shows that it is meant of sincerity, not a sinless perfection. 2. That sometimes those who, with watchfulness and resolution, have, by the grace of God, kept their integrity in the midst of temptation, have, through security, and carelessness, and neglect of the grace of God, been surprised into sin, when the hour of temptation has been over. Noah, who had kept sober in drunken company, is now drunk in sober company. Let him that thinks he stands take heed. 3. That we have need to be very careful, when we use God’s good creatures plentifully, lest we use them to excess. Christ’s disciples must take heed lest at any time their hearts be overcharged, Luke 21 34. Now the consequence of Noah’s sin was shame. He was uncovered within his tent, made naked to his shame, as Adam when he had eaten forbidden fruit. Yet Adam sought concealment; Noah is so destitute of thought and reason that he seeks no covering. This was a fruit of the vine that Noah did not think of. Observe here the great evil of the sin of drunkenness. (1.) It discovers men. What infirmities they have, they betray when they are drunk, and what secrets they are entrusted with are then easily got out of them. Drunken porters keep open gates. (2.) It disgraces men, and exposes them to contempt. As it shows them, so it shames them. Men say and do that when drunk which when they are sober they would blush at the thoughts of, Hab 2 15, 16.

MacArthur says:

The old man Noah, 600 years old when the Flood came, and that’s been a year plus ago. The old man in this passage sins. Age was no guarantee against sin.

Ham, the father of Canaan — we have here the second mention of this particular son of his — saw his father naked and told his two brothers outside (verse 22).

MacArthur tells us that the outcome of that leads to something much more serious, further proof that God hates all sin, even the small ones:

It seems like a minor sin to see your father naked. Of all the imaginable sins, that doesn’t seem to be at the top of the list. And it seems almost incredible that a relatively minor event would have such major repercussions. But consistently, in Genesis, you will find that the fate of people and the fate of nations is determined by occurrences with the ancestors of those people and nations that seem trivial, and this is one of those. On the surface it looks trivial. When we dig a little deeper into it, it isn’t trivial. And we’ll see the connection of the evil Canaanites to Canaan the son of Ham.

No sin, furthermore, is minor. The sin of Noah wasn’t minor, and the sin of Ham wasn’t minor because no sin is minor. The fact of the matter is, though, that God, in demonstrating to us that sin had survived the Flood, He could have picked a thousand sins. Because Noah was a sinner, and his wife was a sinner, and the sons and their wives were sinners, God could have picked any number of sins to illustrate their fallenness. But He picks what appears to us to be somewhat of a minor sin to demonstrate to us that there doesn’t have to be some kind of severe heinousness connected to a sin to make it a sin. The smallest iniquity – the smallest iniquity – can have disastrous repercussions. The sooner men learn that the better for them.

I think some people think that if you can just avoid the big ones, you’ll make it, when it’s the little ones that in the Scripture God chronicles as those sins that devastated families and devastated nations. And I think He purposely chose this sin; He could have chosen many out of their lives, but He chose this one to make the point that it is not just murder and pillage and fornication and adultery that damn humanity; it’s even the lack of self-control and disrespect which are demonstrated here.

Henry condemns Ham’s disrespect but puts it in a more everyday perspective:

Ham’s impudence and impiety: He saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren, v. 22. To see it accidentally and involuntarily would not have been a crime; but, 1. He pleased himself with the sight, as the Edomites looked up on the day of their brother (Obad 12), pleased, and insulting. Perhaps Ham had sometimes been himself drunk, and reproved for it by his good father, whom he was therefore pleased to see thus overcome. Note, It is common for those who walk in false ways themselves to rejoice at the false steps which they sometimes see others make. But charity rejoices not in iniquity, nor can true penitents that are sorry for their own sins rejoice in the sins of others. 2. He told his two brethren without (in the street, as the word is), in a scornful deriding manner, that his father might seem vile unto them. It is very wrong, (1.) To make a jest of sin (Prov 14 9), and to be puffed up with that for which we should rather mourn, 1 Cor 5 2. And, (2.) To publish the faults of any, especially of parents, whom it is our duty to honour. Noah was not only a good man, but had been a good father to him; and this was a most base disingenuous requital to him for his tenderness. Ham is here called the father of Canaan, which intimates that he who was himself a father should have been more respectful to him that was his father.

However, upon hearing what Ham said, Shem and Japheth took a garment, laying it across their shoulders, then walked backwards — backwards — to lay it across Noah’s naked body; their faces were turned the other way so that they would not see their father naked (verse 23).

Henry discusses the courtesy and respect the two sons showed towards their father:

They not only would not see it themselves, but provided that no one else might see it, herein setting us an example of charity with reference to other men’s sin and shame; we must not only not say, A confederacy, with those that proclaim it, but we must be careful to conceal it, or at least to make the best of it, so doing as we would be done by. 1. There is a mantle of love to be thrown over the faults of all, 1 Pet 4 8. 2. Besides this, there is a robe of reverence to be thrown over the faults of parents and other superiors.

More to follow next week.

Next time — Genesis 9:24-29