Deja vu often occurs because a vague sense of familiarity causes our minds to think that we've been in the exact place and moment before, even if we never have. The mind will often do the same thing with familiar words when we interpret the Bible. I think this has happened in the text we're looking at today: Genesis 9:18-29. The text is as follows.
Noah began to be a man of the land, and he planted a vineyard. He drank of the wine and became drunk and he uncovered himself in his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brothers outside. Then Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it on both their shoulders, and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father. Their faces were turned backward, and they did not see their father’s nakedness. When Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done to him, he said, “Cursed be Canaan a servantof servants shall he be to his brothers.” He also said, “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem; and let Canaan be his servant. May God enlarge Japheth, and let him dwell in the tents of Shem, and let Canaan be his servant.”
After the flood Noah lived 350 years. All the days of Noah were 950 years, and he died.
First, it should be noted that this narrative within the larger flood narrative is itself within the framework of a genealogy. The toledoths of the book frame Genesis and not only signal sections in the book, they also trace a line from Adam to Israel as the recipients of the task of the image of God. They are not meant to describe a literal history of the world. One should think of the elements that surround the genealogies as place-holder history for things unknown and things about which the author is not primarily concerned. The point being made, that Israel, as the rightful recipients of the image of God, are the rightful heirs of the land that God as marked out for himself as opposed to the Philistines and other groups grouped together as the Canaanites or Amorites. The land of Israel is Eden. The people of Israel are Adam. That is the point. The attempt itself to make the text about other issues is itself already an eisegetical tendency to want the Bible to speak to other issues with which the modern reader is concerned rather than the ones with which the ancient author is concerned.
Second, the theme of partaking of fruit and sexual immorality, I would argue, appears in the book at the beginning of its three main sections (2-3, 9-10, and 18-19). Adam and Eve partake of the forbidden "fruit," and both Noah and Lot partake in the fruit of the vine. Whereas the serpent functions as the vehicle of temptation in Genesis 3, the other two have the overconsumption of wine function in that role, perhaps indicating that drunkenness is a satanic influence.
This all sets the sin that is about to be committed but here is where some interpreters eisegete familiar terminology from another text into this one that fails to observe what is actually said here, so let's look at the details closely.
The claim is that to "uncover the nakedness of your father" is to have sex with the wife of your father. Hence, the sin here is either Ham or Canaan having sex with his father's wife.
Here is why this is eisegetical and not exegetical in nature. 1. The terminology in Leviticus 18 has to do with doing the uncovering of the nakedness. To have sex with someone is idiomatically described as "to uncovering the nakedness of someone. The problem is that the text here states that Noah uncovered himself. It does not even say he uncovered his nakedness. That's contextual but not semantic which is what is needed for the idiom. In other words, the eisegete is reconstructing the idiom out of terms in this text when the text itself does not contain the phraseology of the idiom. There is nakedness mentioned. There is uncovering mentioned. But they are not put together as "and Ham/Canaan uncovered the nakedness of his father," which is the way the idiom is stated throughout Leviticus 18. Noah uncovers himself, which, if that referred to his wife, would mean that he slept with his wife. The verb is a Hithpael, which is primarily the reflexive stem in Biblical Hebrew, X did this to himself. So Ham/Canaan isn't the one uncovering the nakedness. 2. There is absolutely no mention of Noah's wife in the situation. She is read in by the eisegete. In Leviticus 18, it is explicitly mentioned because the text is trying to teach the Israelites that to sleep with the wife of one's father is to sleep with one's father. This is not something they naturally understand. Hence, it's explicitly stated. Likewise, the number one rule of exegesis is that if the text does not state it explicitly, it needs to be implied by something else in the text. This is where the attempt to read in the idiom fails to function as this implicature because it isn't the actual idiom. So neither the idiom or the explicit mention of the wife, as it is explicitly mentioned in Leviticus 18, are present in the text. 3. The explicit manner of the sin is described by both the positive and negative references to "looking at" Noah being naked. In verse 22, Ham "saw" the nakedness of his father. Again, he did not "uncover" his father's nakedness but "looked at" it. In contrast, the two other sons put the garment on their shoulders and walk backward to "cover the nakedness of their father" with their faces faced away from him so that they did "not look at their father's nakedness" (v. 23). The emphasis on "looking at" rather than "uncovering" is not the idiom referring to having sex with anyone. It is sexual, but not an idiom for sex.
Hence, everything in the text would indicate that the wife is not involved, nor is any sexual act involved, but rather it is strictly a sexual "looking at" his father and then telling the brothers about it is an incestuous evil the two other boys are not willing to "look at" their naked father who has uncovered himself and lies naked in his tent.
But there is more than this. We might ask how Genesis describes sex with someone. In the other two passages mentioned, the first describes it metaphorically as partaking of fruit and the other describes it as "laying" with their father. This term is the term used over and over again. In other words, when not using a metaphor, the idiomatic description Genesis uses to refer to sleeping with someone, including incestuously as in 19:31-35 (Potiphar's wife uses the same term in 39:7, 12). The other idiom is the term "knowing." So Adam knew his wife. Another literal description is "he went into her" (38:18). The term of uncovering the nakedness of someone is never used in Genesis, and as argued above, it isn't used here either.
So why do eisegetes think it's here? Because that which is generally familiar is read into the text and verified, not through the linguistic evidence within the context itself but by a feeling that they are the same thing. In other words, it's a case of "soundslikegesis." It sounds like X, so it is X. But the text itself would never yield that conclusion. One must go outside the text, ignore the actual wording of the idiom, and then force that illegitimate reconstruction of the idiom back into the text.
The sin, according to the exegesis of the text is that Ham, not Canaan, looked at his naked father who had uncovered himself in a drunken stupor. The two more righteous sons cover his nakedness (if nakedness referred to sex what exactly would that mean?) and refuse to look at his nakedness. Now, it may be that "nakedness" here refers to his male member, so that would be perhaps a metonymy of adjunct, but it isn't an idiomatic expression of the full sexual act, and it certainly doesn't indicate that anything sexual was done with Noah's wife. (As a side note, Noah only has one wife throughout the narrative and this would mean that Noah's wife is Ham's actual mother. When incest is referred to in Leviticus 18:8, it is likely referring to the wife of the father who is not the mother of the son, which is a more likely scenario. In fact, Leviticus talks about uncovering the nakedness of the father by saying it is uncovering the nakedness of one's mother, and states that one is uncovering the nakedness of his mother [Lev 18:7]. Since this is likely Ham's mother, one would think it would include that the mother's nakedness is uncovered in the same way it is in the Levitical text. It isn't because it's not referring to a sexual act with the mother. Hence, it does not say that the son commits incest because he sleeps with his mother but rather another woman who is joined as one flesh with his father.)
This indicates, if anything, that sexual immorality begins with even looking upon the nakedness of someone who is forbidden. This would mean that God does not limit incestuous acts to physical acts alone but even extends it to an intentional look, conveying how much God hates such activity.
But what it primarily teaches is that Canaan has no right to the land. As his father disqualifies his son from inheriting the land of Israel, the Canaanites are disqualified by their perverse sexual activity described later in Leviticus 18. This is the sin of the Amorite for which they are removed from the land.
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