NOTES for Gen 9:18-28

Why does Noah curse Ham? What is wrong with Noah's son pointing out his father's sin to his brothers? Or is drunkenness not a sin? Hardly: every biblical author, without exception, takes an unequivocally negative view of this vice. Does that mean Noah's response to Ham's action was unjust? Hardly: Noah is a righteous man who, like anyone, can of course sin, but who, like any righteous man, will not defend his sinful act. What, then, is the matter? Perhaps the key point that explains, if not everything, then much, lies in the mockery with which Ham points out his father's sin to his brothers. He shows no sympathy for him as his father, let alone compassion for him as his neighbour. The issue here is not personal hurt, but Ham's attitude towards another person's sin. Here there are only two possibilities: to help the one who sins overcome his sin, if only by not drawing others' attention to it when no other help can be offered, or to ridicule the sinner, trampling him still deeper into the mire in which he finds himself, in order to assert oneself at his expense. The second option is, of course, very risky: everyone sins in one way or another, though not all at the same time, and there is always a chance that tomorrow someone else will trample into the mire the very person who is doing so with such zeal today. But the human desire for self-assertion is often so strong that the person asserting himself gives no thought to tomorrow. Then he ceases to see his neighbour as a neighbour, seeing him only as an instrument of his own self-assertion. And at the same time he ceases to see God. At any rate, the living God.