2 Nov
Deconstructing Noah’s Curse
Mark Twain is one of my favorite writers; his insights into biblical narratives are often profound, and his honesty is always refreshing. In one of his more famous quotes, he says, “It ain’t those parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.”
Many people today would probably agree with that statement. With this thought in mind, we shall touch upon one of the saddest moments in the history of biblical interpretation, when Bible-believing people used the Scriptures to justify the institution of slavery on the basis of color alone.
In last week’s Torah reading, we find one of the most problematic passages that has often been used to justify the practice of enslaving blacks in the New World. Without going into too much detail about the actual history of this problem (the subject is immense and none of the Abrahamic religions fare well at all), we will focus (for now) purely on the biblical text itself.
9:25 וַיֹּאמֶר אָרוּר כְּנָעַן – he said, “Cursed be Canaan - Saadia paraphrased the text as “Cursed be the father of Canaan,” i.e., Ham. Most translations read: “Cursed be Canaan. . . .” but the verse may just as easily imply that only Canaan is to be a curse to his brothers, i.e., Shem and Japheth—but not their descendants. The distinction is an important one, for the supporters of slavery argued that Saadia Gaon’s Arabic translation of Genesis 9:25. It is unfortunate that this text got distorted by people who already made up their mind before adequately understanding the real meaning of the biblical text.
Yet, the reality is that the Canaanites did eventually become the servants of the Israelites and of the Greeks, and later, the Romans. E.A. Speiser raises a relevant question to the discussion: “Was this an accomplished fact at the time of composition, or is the allusion no more than a wishful projection into the future, as the context would seem to suggest?”[2] The answer depends on how we interpret the passage.
Note that in the Table of Nations found in Genesis 10:6, the biblical narrator lists the sons of Ham as Cush (basically Ethiopia), Mizraim (Egypt), Put (which is generally presumed to be one of the North African countries) and Canaan (of the country of Palestine/Canaan). Thus the text of our passage has really nothing to do with people of African descent, but refers only to the Canaanite peoples who inhabited ancient Palestine.
Historically, the Hamitic peoples did not fare poorly as a result of Noah’s curse. Quite the contrary! Anthropologist Arthur Custance demonstrates how the descendants of the Hamites became the originators and creators of civilization: “Out of Ham have been derived all the so-called colored races—‘the yellow,’ ‘red,’ ‘brown,’ and ‘black’—the Mongoloid and the Negroid. Their contribution to human civilization in so far as it has to do with technology has been absolutely unsurpassed.” [3] The Hamitic peoples created two of the first great civilizations of the ancient Near East: Mesopotamia and the Egypt. Nimrod, the son of Cush, is credited with establishing several great cities of antiquity, including: Uruk, Sumer, Calneh, Nineveh and Babylon (Gen 10:8–12).
[1] A parenthetical note: One could argue that it is very doubtful whether Saadia understood this curse to apply to all of Ham’s children until the end of time itself; even if Saadia meant Ham, Noah may have been speaking only to the immediate generation. Parents often “curse” their children whenever they do something foolish that upsets them. One is reminded of the old Jewish mother’s curse: “May you have children just like you,” which was one of my own Mother’s favorite lines.
[2] Genesis, ABC, 61.
[3] Noah’s Three Sons (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), 13, 72; see also pp. 122–123, 152, and 201.
