The Sins of the Fathers, Part 4 (Genesis 9-11)

   As could be expected the iniquity of the fathers are visited upon their children unto the third and fourth generation, as God states later to Moses in Exodus 20:15.  “And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard: And he drank of the vine, and was drunken; and he was (naked) within his tent.”  

   When Ham, one of Noah’s three sons saw his father thus, he “told his two brothers without.  And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father’s nakedness.  And Noah awoke from (the drunkenness of) his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him.”  It does not say what he had done, but what ever it was, it was not good. “And (Noah) said, cursed be Canaan: a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.”

   The first of several questions that come to mind is; Why did Canaan, the son of Ham, receive the curse instead of Ham directly?  One can only surmise that Noah knew not only his sins, but all sins are visited onto future generations.  Noah’s children no doubt had witnessed much before the flood, the results of the vile perverted sexual activity.  Genesis 11:10 indicates Shem was 98 years old during the flood!  The perversions which surfaced in the gar ...