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Problems
* Order of sons listed
* First time "vineyard" shows up
** Law of first mention wherein a Jewish hermenutical principle suggests that the first mention of an important word lays the groundwork for how we understand it later - ie. now anytime we see vineyard we should tie it back to Noah
* Noah is naked in "his own" tent... why is this even mentioned?
* Not a lot of people around - so how did Noah find out what was going on?
Marty Reading
- Parenthetical comment about Canaan often
Genesis 9:18-27
Now the sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. (Ham was the father of Canaan.) These three were the sons of Noah, and from these the whole earth was populated. And Noah began to be a man of the ground, and he planted a vineyard. And he drank some of the wine and became drunk, and he exposed himself in the midst of his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and he told his two brothers outside. Then Shem and Japheth took a garment, and the two of them put it on their shoulders and, walking backward, they covered the nakedness of their father. And their faces were turned backward, so that they did not see the nakedness of their father. Then Noah awoke from his drunkenness, and he knew what his youngest son had done to him. And he said, “Cursed be Canaan, a slave of slaves he shall be to his brothers.” Then he said, “Blessed be Yahweh, the God of Shem, and let Canaan be a slave to them. May God make space for Japheth, and let him dwell in the tents of Shem, and let Canaan be a slave for him.”
- Ham is kind of dropped from the story eventually... "Ham the father of Canaan" shows up a bit then all of a sudden in verse 25 Noah goes right after Canaan
- Recall that the flood narrative paralleled creation, so we might expect this to then parallel the fall narrative
- Guy comes out and creates a garden, then there's fruit
- Noah tastes the garden's fruit and bad things happen
- Nakedness is another big theme
- There is a covering of the nakedness
- Story ends with a curse
Midrash
- Ancient Jewish form of commentary
- Western commentary is very deductive and straight forward
- Easterner does this very differently
- Inductive
- A story is hidden with a story (the midrash) which is designed to help the reader discover a truth
- Culturally "To look upon the nakedness" means more than "to see". The word is about "perceiving"
- Idiom has 2 primary meanings: molestation or castration
- Idea that this means to sleep with Noah's wife, or to sleep with one's mother
- Linked to Deuteronomy
- The phrase doesn't necessarily mean that, it would be tied to the idea "to sleep with your mother is to molest your father"
- Midrash says this is obviously castration
- Why is that so obvious to the Midrash?
- This parallels Genesis 2 and 3
- Awkward paragraph about the rivers that didn't seem to belong
- Family trees are talked about with 2 images... trees or rivers
- There were 4 rivers, Noah has 3 sons, and God told Noah out of the Ark to "be fruitful and multiply"
- Noah is supposed to have another son
- Rabbi Fohrman teaches that from the Midrash we are to discover that Noah is bent on revenge here...
- Ham in a sense cursed Noah's ability to have more sons, and so Noah curses Ham's son
- God knew when to say enough regarding his destructive power in the flood narrative
- In Genesis 1 God knows when to say enough regarding creation, paralleled with humanity's choice to know when to say enough but they choose not to by eating the fruit.
- Similarly here we have the same choice for Noah to make God's decision - to know when to say enough about his destructive power
- The story teaches the same thing here that we see with humanity's nature - Noah is given the choice to either trust the story and to make the right decision to not perpetuate the falleness of humanity but Noah's desire for revenge takes over, and he uses a curse that is only ever used by God, which changes the course of history for the people of Canaan - the story has eternal consequences.
Main Point
Forgiveness is about mimicking God in the flood story - to know when to stop destroying and we see the characters constantly not make this choice, but choose to define good and bad for themselves and not trust God's story