"The entrance of thy words giveth light; it giveth understanding unto the simple." (
Psalms 119:130).
While the normal rule of reading Scripture should be literally, the problem is that the wooden literalist interpretation on the Story of Noah and Ham in
Genesis 9 (that ignores the Bible's metaphors given elsewhere) gives no understanding and it is not simple. Nothing in the story makes any sense whatsover and we see no repeat of that event elswhere in Scripture. Whereas, in the proper reading of this story (using the metaphorical language in
Leviticus 18:8,
Leviticus 20:11,
Leviticus 20:17) we see a connection of perfect harmony between the idioms used in Leviticus and
Genesis 9 and a proper understanding of why Canaan was truly cursed. For this story is easily paralleld in the Story of Lot and his two daughters.
(1) Both Noah & Lot get drunk after a great miraculous Judgment from God.
(2) Both Noah & Lot are asleep & they do not perceive an incident of incest under their nose.
(3) Both Noah & Lot are involved with incest regarding two close family members.
(4) Both Noah & Lot's wives no longer give children to their husband after a great Judgment.
(5) Both Noah & Lot's wives are judged by God in some way as the result of a sin that befalls them (either directly or indirectly).
The story also continues on through the pages of Scripture with both sets of offspring being destroyed later in Exodus by God's people. In fact,
Leviticus 18 talks about the Canaanites (Canaan) along with the laws that forbid incest. On top of that, we see Ham's motivation as to why he slept with his father's wife elsewhere in Scripture. Ham desire was to usurp his father's natural authority that he has over his wife in marriage. For
1 Corinthians 7:4 says, "The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife."