Genesis 9:18-29
I get a real looking-forward/looking-backward feel to this passage. As it turns out, Canaan would be a people known for false gods and related immorality (like temple prostitution). On the surface of things, the vehemence of the judgment here seems harsh. Most of us would see maybe some impropriety here. But there is the suggestion that the attitude of Ham, father of Canaan, was such that this transgression was something more than an oops. I guess we’ll never know exactly.
What’s probably most key here is that it is Shem’s (name leading to the term “Semite”) God who is blessed (verse 26). What we’re to see, I think, isn’t an ethnic bias but a theological one. Canaan would come to represent ways of people who would have only a god whose ‘worship’ would suit their own inclinations – a projection of themselves, in other words.
Our God is with us, but we would never forget the power of his being with us rests on how greater and “other” than us he truly is: a father-God to be feared in his might and authority, but a dad in his love. The sons and daughters who fully respect this God (note the totally respectful actions of verse 23) will be blessed (verse 27). But those who don’t treat him with utmost respect, well, consider Ham.
Prayer:
Our God is an awesome God
He reigns from heaven on high
With wisdom, power and love,
Our God is an awesome God!
- Rich Mullens
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Reflections from Bible readings and discussion on anything.
2 comments:
Noah being a man of the Earth planted a vineyard.
That'd take some mighty time to grow.
He planted a vineyard and then he got drunk. Awash in drunkeness and revealed in nakedness lay Noah.
Noah planted a vineyard, fermented some grapes and drunk he got. Drunk and naked.
Sorry, just rolling it around to see how it feels from this side to that. It's not part that is portrayed in the kids' illustrated book of famous bible stories (Noah drunk with an empty wine skin, naked and drunk just some time after his 600th birthday).
Where was the boys' mother?
there are stories on the streets and photos on the net of drunks who pass out at partie and then have rude things visited upon their bodies, sometimes in jest, sometimes in violent violation.
getting drunk is not the problem: "what? i drink, i fall down, what's the problem?" it may not be pretty, it may be foolish, but it's not the problem.
i gather from this lesson that the problem is how poorly you treat your friend, your relation, the member of your community, how poorly you re-member your community.
if you treat your earthly father shabbily, disrespectfullly, then how poorly will you treat your heavenly father? your brother, your neighbour? how shabbily will you remember your god, put your god together in a different form?
we each, as limited creatures of experience, put together a god that's filtered or mirrored by our modest understanding. but i would do well to remember to do it with the respect and fear of shem and japheth.
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