In Genesis 9 God stated his commitment to bless the whole earth, for all time, as symbolized by the sign of the rainbow. He gave Noah and his family the task of repopulating the earth. They carried out this task, as recorded in the table of nations in Gen 10.
The process of "replenishing the earth" was not an entirely smooth one, though. Human sinfulness continued to be an impediment to human progress, and we see one example in Gen 9.
Genesis 9:18 reminds us of the names of Noah's sons: "The sons of Noah who went forth from the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. (Ham was the father of Canaan.)"
Israelite readers would have taken note of the parenthetical mention of Canaan here. The Israelites would later be charged with driving out the Canaanites from the Promised Land, and they were cautioned not to follow the practices of the Canaanites. What was the background of these people?
We go on to read that Noah at one point drank too much wine and was passed out, naked, in his tent. Ham disrespectfully advertised this fact to Shem and Japheth, who were careful to cover up their father. Noah later invoked a curse upon Canaan: "Cursed be Canaan: a servant of servants shall he be to his brothers.''(v 25).
Two questions arise from this passage: (1) What sin did Ham commit? (2) Why was Canaan singled out for a curse?
One possible answer is simply that Ham had disrespect for his father. Noah had prophetic insight that Canaan was the son of Ham who would especially exhibit the sins of his father, and so he invoked a curse upon Canaan.
A second answer, popular among Jews and Christians in the early centuries AD, is that Ham castrated his father. The rabbis, ever on the lookout for possibilities of measure for measure justice in the Bible, described it this way: Ham prevented Noah from having a fourth son, so Noah invoked a curse upon Ham's fourth son (see Gen 10:4 for the sons of Ham).
A weakness of this view is that there is nothing about castration in Genesis 9. What the text does say is that Ham "saw the nakedness of his father'' (v 22). Elsewhere, in Lev 18 and 20, to "see the nakedness" of someone or to "uncover the nakedness" of someone refers to a sexual act---see Lev 20:17, which indicates these phrases are synonymous. Significantly, the discussion of forbidden sexual unions in Lev 18 and 20 is prefaced with an admonition to avoid the sins of Egypt and Canaan (Lev 18:3).
Based on the connection with Lev18, 20, a number of interpreters propose that Ham's sin was a sexual act, either with Noah or with Noah's wife. The latter possibility would give the best explanation of why Canaan was singled out. If Ham committed incest with his mother, and Canaan was the product of that union, this could explain why Canaan was singled out for a curse.
This possibility fits with Lev 20:20-21, which refer to having sex with a man's wife as uncovering that man's nakedness (which, in turn, is synonymous with seeing the man's nakedness). In this scenario, Ham is a precursor of Reuben (Gen 35:22). Also, the Canaanites, like the Moabites and Ammonites, would have originated from an act of incest.
In Ancient Near Eastern cultures, one way to assert dominance within a clan was to sleep with the clan leader's wife or wives. Think, for example, of Absalom's behavior with the concubines of David (2 Sam 16). Ham and Reuben may have had similar motives. In this case, Noah invokes a curse upon Canaan because he does not want Ham's line through Canaan to be dominant.
For further discussion, listen to episode 158 of the Naked Bible Podcast and see the paper "Noah's Nakedness and the Curse on Canaan (Genesis 9:20-27) by John Sietze Bergsma and Scott Walker Hahn, Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 124, No. 1 (Spring, 2005), pp. 25-40.
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