Genesis 9

“So hey…look here see, sport. Get them giraffes off the what’s the? Scoop the ship’s captain and a bottle of rum. Tells me how’s-a-come I got to know what paddle? Who’s what? Bail no rattle handle come here, sport…see my nose?”

“Uh-oh. Looks like Pop’sbeen at the bottle again. Why don’t he lay off it? And how come he can’t keep his pants on when he’s drinkin’? Nobody wants to see a six-hundred-year-old guy buck naked. Yuck; that’s disgusting.”

So, Noah disembarks from the ark, plants a vineyard, and proceeds to get tanked. Ham, his son, in an act of filial impiety, scoffs at the old fella and wins for himself and his progeny a fierce cursing.

Now…here’s the question: How are we to think about the old man’s drunken cursing? This seems to explain why the Israelites might reasonably scorn the Canaanites into whose land they are moving. But is there something unseemly about hating or cursing at all?

©2020 Joel Picard