By Bobby L. Graham
My sister’s church has a series on Genesis. The young man teaching the course believes Ham had sex with his mother. In researching this, I find others also believe this to be true. We are not given any further explanation of what act occurred. Thus, I would be nervous about drawing conclusions and publicly stating them. . . . What are your thoughts?
First, please note that alcohol created this mockery (Prov. 20:1)! In the response that some have made to the statement in Genesis 9:22, we see (once again) how humans speculate in the absence of any basis for so doing. Various wild theories, ungrounded in the text or in the context, suppose what might have happened; but they shed no true light. Read the verse in question: “Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brothers outside.” Nothing said in the verse or in the surrounding context directly states or implies homosexuality or incest. One must read these ideas into the passage instead of relying upon what it actually states. Another theory asserts that Ham castrated his father; and still another, that he magically rendered him impotent. All such guesses belong to the realm of fiction, make believe, and pretend.
One cause for these unjustified theories is that men equate “Ham. . . saw the nakedness and his father” with what Leviticus calls “uncovering the nakedness” of one’s father or mother. In this setting, they are not equal to each other in the absence of contextual backing! The word used here for nakedness involves the exposure of the body in a shameful way. The problem comes in making Ham the one who perpetrated the shameful act. He did not cause his father’s nakedness, though he saw it. After seeing it, he reacted in a way that was disrespectful toward Noah. His inner sense of purity and modesty should have resulted in a different outcome. Instead, Ham was disrespectful of his father. In contrast, Shem and Japheth reacted in a more respectful manner by simply covering their father. Their action was designed to prevent anyone’s seeing Noah’s nakedness again. Absolutely nothing indicates that Ham uncovered his nakedness or that he committed sodomy with Noah or incest with either parent.
Here are the pertinent passages concerning “uncovering nakedness” from Leviticus:
The nakedness of your father or the nakedness of your mother you shall not uncover. She is your mother; you shall not uncover her nakedness (Lev. 18:7).
If a man takes his sister, his father’s daughter or his mother’s daughter, and sees her nakedness and she sees his nakedness, it is a wicked thing. And they shall be cut off in the sight of their people (Lev. 20:17).
These verses demonstrate that the words “sees her nakedness,” in the given context, can mean what “uncover the nakedness” means. In Genesis 9:22, however, the contextual underpinning is missing, thus leaving “sees” to mean simply observed or beheld. Mike Willis states as much in his commentary on Genesis:
In Leviticus 18:7 and 20:17 there is an interplay between “see (one’s) nakedness”and “uncover (one’s) nakedness,” both of which are used to describe sexual intercourse with a near relative. However, to treat “saw the nakedness” with sexual incest in Genesis 9 is “almost impossible to square it with biblical story (Hamilton 1:322) because there is neither incest nor sodomy involved” (Willis, 362).
The fictions of denominationalism and other man-made religions have arisen throughout history in the same ways upon which we have here focused. May we all be cautious and careful to test all things by God’s word! Let us not read into the biblical text things that are not there (Deut. 4:2; Prov. 30:6).
