This sucks. I have attempted to stay up all night to finish this issue, but could only "survive" the night without laying down and sleep until 1:30 am. Now I'm staring at an unfinished issue (I wouldn't have finished this morning even if I'd stayed up), and I'm not sure how soon I can finish it. I'm farther away than I thought. Yikes.
Genesis 9 starts off with the proclamation that: "Then God blessed Noah and his sons..." That's a pretty cool way to start a new chapter -- with God bless you. God made a covenant with Noah that He would never again flood the earth and kill every living thing on it. This covenant was made between God and Noah and for "all generations to come." We are also recipients and "participants" in this covenant. The sign of this covenant was a rainbow. It says that every time He sees the rainbow that He will remember this covenant. That is good news for us.
The end of the chapter tells us of Noah planting a vineyard, making wine, getting drunk and passing out naked in his tent. While the Bible points out elsewhere that getting drunk is foolish, in this story it wasn't the bigger error. Ham saw his father's nakedness and, instead of covering the mistake/error, he went and told his two brothers. His two brothers did exactly what Ham should have done: they walked backwards with a garment, laying it over their dad and covering it up, so that they wouldn't see his nakedness. They understood something about shame, sin, and exposure. They knew it was better to cover their dad's shame than expose it. When Noah awoke and discovered what had happened, he cursed Ham and his descendents. It's pretty clear that exposing sin was not a good thing. While this might fly in the face of a legalist, that's just too bad. God's Word helps build our character, and our impulse and behavior should reflect that of Shem and Japheth, who covered their father's nakedness/error/shame. They honored him and did not equate this failure to limit his drinking with his value as a person. His dignity was to be valued and struggled/worked for.
Another misconception that some people have actually tried to use was taking this story as the historical reason why white people should enslave black people. Scholars point out that the Canaanites were white/caucasian, though. So that stupid argument doesn't hold up.
I'm not so sure about my theory of why Noah and people lived so much longer than we do today. If the sun's radiation was now greater on the earth and limited man's days as a result, it doesn't exactly explain how Noah lived another 350 years after the flood. The lifespan of those after him was still large (though not as large as Noah's), going down to the 400's, 200s, and then the 70s (by the descriptions in chapter 11).
Posted by Doug Van Pelt at September 25, 2006 08:29 AMI have been wondering about that piece of the Bible. The whole thing seems kind of weird. Ilike how you describe the situation. P.S. I am a Mom!! My daughter was at Cornerstone last year, so I was reading the article in your magazine. My 17 yr old son assures me that I wouldn't like the music of most of the groups in your magazine, but thats alright. Bottom line is, whether Jesus is Lord or not. I think there is a world of kids out there who I as an older person need to love and accept and not judge. Oh, yeh, I used to be a Giesbrecht, so I was wondering who that Doug Giesbrecht is and whether he has any relatives in Manitoba Canada???
Posted by: susan lennox at September 25, 2006 04:03 PM