What Did Ham Do to Noah? He Saw His Father Naked and Told His Brothers

Published

May 24, 2024

Updated

October 16, 2026

Summary

Genesis 9:22 says Ham “saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without”; Shem and Japheth then covered Noah without looking at him.
When Noah woke he cursed not Ham but Ham’s son Canaan: “a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren,” that is, the lowest of servants (Genesis 9:25).
Augustine, Calvin and the notes of the Catholic New American Bible read Ham’s sin as shaming his father by looking and telling. Rabbis in the Talmud read it as an act against Noah, and the scholars John Bergsma and Scott Hahn argued in 2005 for incest with Noah’s wife.
Genesis Rabbah gives several reasons Canaan bore the curse: God had already blessed Noah’s sons, or Canaan saw first and told Ham. Augustine held that Ham was cursed through his son.
Ham’s sons were Cush, Mizraim, Phut and Canaan (Genesis 10:6). Genesis does not name his wife; the Book of Jubilees calls her Ne’elatama’uk.
The “curse of Ham” once used to justify enslaving black people misreads Genesis, which curses Canaan and says nothing about skin. In 2018 the Southern Baptist Convention renewed its public renunciation of it.

Ham saw his father Noah lying drunk and uncovered in his tent, and he went out and told his two brothers. That is all Genesis says he did. Shem and Japheth walked in backward and covered their father, and when Noah woke he cursed not Ham but Ham’s son Canaan. So short a story leaves hard questions. Why should looking be a sin? Why does Noah, on waking, know “what his younger son had done unto him,” as if something…

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Bibliography (Click to show)

King James Version: Genesis 4:15; 7:13; 9:1; 9:20–28; 10:6, 8–9, 15–19; Leviticus 18:8; 20:17; Psalm 105:23; Acts 17:22, 26; 1 Peter 3:20, BibleGateway.
Genesis 9 and 10 with notes, New American Bible, Revised Edition, USCCB (chapter 10).
Augustine, City of God 16.1–2 and 19.15, tr. Marcus Dods, New Advent (Book 16, Book 19).
John Chrysostom, Homily 22 on Ephesians, tr. Gross Alexander, New Advent.
John Calvin, Commentary on Genesis, vol. 1, on Genesis 9, tr. John King, Christian Classics Ethereal Library.
Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 70a, William Davidson Edition, Sefaria.
Genesis Rabbah 36:7, The Sefaria Midrash Rabbah (2022), Sefaria.
John Sietze Bergsma and Scott Walker Hahn, “Noah’s Nakedness and the Curse on Canaan (Genesis 9:20–27)”, Journal of Biblical Literature 124, no. 1 (2005): 25–40.
The Book of Jubilees 7, tr. R. H. Charles, The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament (1913), pseudepigrapha.com.
David M. Goldenberg, The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Princeton University Press, 2003); Desmond Tutu, “Suffering not sanctioned by scripture”, Times Higher Education, 30 April 2004.
Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845), chapter 1, Documenting the American South.
Southern Baptist Convention, “On Renouncing the Doctrine of the ‘Curse of Ham’ as a Justification for Racism”, 2018.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, “Race and the Priesthood”, Gospel Topics Essays.
Dates: “Works of St. Augustine of Hippo” and “St. John Chrysostom”, The Catholic Encyclopedia (1907, 1910), New Advent; John King, Translator’s Preface to Calvin’s Commentary on Genesis, CCEL; Sefaria index records for Bereshit Rabbah and Sanhedrin; The Posen Library, “Emzara in Jubilees”.

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What Did Ham Do to Noah? He Saw His Father Naked and Told His Brothers

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What Did Ham Do to Noah? He Saw His Father Naked and Told His Brothers

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