After a full year at sea, Noah really appreciated the dry ground. I can relate to that somewhat after having served on three different Navy ships and sailing around the world with various port stops. We always loved it when the ship stopped at a port, even if it was just for a quick refueling. The solid ground was a marvelous thing once we got our sea legs back. Noah, however, got a little too intimate with the ground. Genesis 9:20-21 says, “Noah began to be a man of the soil, and he planted a vineyard. He drank of the wine and became drunk and lay uncovered in his tent.” The story goes on to tell us that Ham, one of Noah’s son, found his father drunk and naked in his tent and ran to tell his brothers. It appears there was a deep disrespect for his father and not a real concern for him so much so that Noah ended up cursing Ham as a result. The other two sons, Shem and Japheth took immediate action to cover their father’s shame.

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.

What a way for the man Noah to end his career! What a shame. Alcohol brings some terrible consequences sometimes. Guzik comments on this and says, “This is repulsive, but not terribly surprising. Many people who get drunk become victims of abuse, sexual and otherwise. 75% of the men and 55% of the women involved in date-rape situations were drinking or taking drugs just before the attack. The FBI says 50% of all rapes involve alcohol.”1 Guzik continues, “There are more costs to drunkenness. In the United States 100,000 people die each year in alcohol-related deaths, while alcohol abuse costs the nation hundreds of billions of dollars each year. Still, the average American television viewer sees 90,000 incidents of drinking on television by age 21 and 100,000 beer commercials by age 18.”1

1 David Guzik, Genesis, David Guzik’s Commentaries on the Bible (Santa Barbara, CA: David Guzik, 2013), Ge 9:20–23.