Ham “uncovered” his father’s “nakedness” and Noah responded with the age old parental curse, “I hope you have a son that does to you what you have done to me!” I’m sorry to say that I can remember my mother saying similar things to me. However, God was in the curse that Noah put on Ham’s son Canaan. Surely, Canaan disgraced his father ham through every generation.

Canaan was the father of the Canaanites. They became Israel’s greatest enemy. Kent Hughes observes that, “The Canaanites were a sensually depraved people. Everything the pagan Canaanites did was an extrapolation of Ham’s lurid sensuality. From the moment Abram entered the land, the Canaanites were there spreading corruption… Leviticus 18 describes the degenerate practices of the Canaanites with a litany of euphemisms so as not to offend the reader, employing the word ‘nakedness’ twenty-four times.” Uncovering one’s nakedness in Leviticus was to perform some kind of disgraceful sexual practice.

This helps me understand why God commands Israel to drive out the “Canaanites” and to obliterate every visible evidence of their presence.

The Canaanites as a people no longer exist. But their practices do. We are still commanded to drive out the “Canaanites” and to eliminate any hint of their presence in our own lives.