I Will Always be Here for You
Watching the drunk
fall down
is funny the first time
and funny the second
It’s funny when he’s bloody
and broken from it
and funny when
the bus comes
and runs over his head
So remember,
I will always
be here for you
waiting
for you to fall.
L'ebbrezza di Noè (The Drunkeness of Noah) -- Giovanni Bellini
After the Great Flood that destroyed all life on Earth exce[t that which Noah had preserved in his great ship, “Noah began to be a man of the soil, and he planted a vineyard. He drank of the wine and became drunk and lay uncovered 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 servant of 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”
ReplyDelete(Genesis 9:20-27). This is one of the most puzzling episodes in the Bible. The most conservative explanation is that Ham sinned by disrespecting his naked father by not covering him. Other theories revolve around the phrase "he saw his nakedness." It was apparently a euphemism for sex, and in Leviticus 18: 6-7, "the nakedness of your father" is the same thing as "the nakedness of your mother," and "the nakedness of your father's wife" is "your father's nakedness." So, was Ham guilty of castration, sodomy, or incest perhaps? Was Ham trying to usurp his father's authority by preventing him from having additional children or by fathering a son with his own mother? Was Canaan the son of Ham and Noah's wife? Another possibility is that, since it was Canaan who was cursed, did he, not his father Ham, do something unmentioned that somehow degraded his grandfather? (Grandsons were sometimes addressed as "son" in the Old Testament; so Noah's youngest "son" may have actually meant his youngest son.) However, every time the sons of Noah are mentioned together it is in this order: Shem, Ham, Japheth. This may indicate that Ham was the middle son. Then, the Genesis passage seems to recognize that Japheth had done his father a kindness, while Ham had neglected him. Shem, was first-born, and his brothers would have been his servants, and Japheth's sons would have been the servants of both of his older brothers. But Noah rewarded Japheth by giving him the privileges formerly belonging to Ham; Canaan would thus become the servant of Japheth and his progeny.