Nothing Worse Than Seeing Your Parents Naked
There's a very strange story in Genesis 9:18-29. Folks have asked me about it a lot lately, so I thought it might be worth a closer look. The story takes place shortly after Noah and his family have survived the flood and God has made a covenant with them and with their descendants, promising to never again let the flood waters destroy all people. Genesis 9:20 tells us that Noah was a man of the soil and planted a vineyard. It's good that he was a man of the soil, because I feel like white collar job opportunities would've been hard to come by so soon after the flood. The consumer base was awfully small at that time. What else was there besides the soil? Retail? Dot coms? No, you were pretty much stuck with farming. In time, Noah chose to imbibe from the fruit of his labor and he became drunk, eventually passing out naked in his tent. One of Noah's sons, Ham (identified as the father of Canaan), saw his father naked. That's how the NIV translates it. In Hebrew,