Bible Observations: Genesis 9

I know that it’s been a while since my last entry in this series, but I haven’t given up! I’m still plugging away, but like usual, there are a few serious questions arising from my reading.

As we pick up with Genesis 9, the Flood’s waters have subsided and Noah, with his family and the animals from the Ark, are left to repopulate the Earth. God makes a covenant with Noah and his sons, signified by a rainbow. But, as I read the passage, I also noticed that God’s covenant was also with every living creature as well. Now, how can anyone of a faith that points to the Bible for inspiration read this and then belittle the desperate efforts some people are making across this country and around the rest of the world to save endangered species from extinction? The idea that societies may need to sometimes restrict their economic development in specific cases in the interests of other “living creatures” is BIBLICAL, not just something that leftist “tree-huggers” advocate.

Also, in this passage God demands an accounting from any man who sheds the blood of his fellow man. Now I know that one of the Ten Commandments given to Moses was really “Thou shalt not murder”, not “Thou shalt not kill.” This apparently has been interpreted to mean that the accountability to God for shedding another’s blood is “exempted” in the case of war. But to me, all this interpretation really means is that those powerful enough to amass and direct armies can get away with murder, while the relatively powerless are subject to full accountability for killing others.

Genesis Chapter 9’s last half deals with a very puzzling and disturbing tale regarding Noah and his sons. Noah had become drunk one night and passed out naked in his tent. His youngest son, Ham, entered his father’s tent and saw his nakedness. Ham then went and told this to his older brothers Shem and Japheth. The two more righteous brothers then entered their father’s tent backwards (so as not to see him) and laid a garment over him to cover his body. Upon awakening, Noah apparently was able to automatically figure out everything that had happened and condemned Ham while praising Shem and Japheth. This doesn’t make any sense to me! It seems (to me) that there was much more to this story than was finally written into scripture. Nakedness in ancient times wasn’t the big taboo that it would later become. And Noah’s quick sizing-up of the situation, as well as his apparent overreaction, doesn’t make any sense either. This bears more investigation. After the telling of that tent incident, Genesis 9 informs us that Noah lived 350 more years, finally dying at the age of 950.

I sadly suspect that the tale of Ham’s offense against Noah was inserted into scripture in order to justify the putting down of those nations further south in Africa whose people have been assigned the designation of “Hamites”, or descendants of Ham.

Personally, I feel that Genesis 9 is an example of what is wrong with some religious people today. If a passage revealing God’s covenant with all of Earth’s living creatures creates some inconvenience or discomfort, then, well, it can simply be ignored. And if, as with the tale of Noah and Ham in the tent, a story makes no sense, then it is somehow a matter of faith to just gloss over the story’s inconsistencies and manufacture some kind of moral lesson from it.