After the Flood: Noah's Covenant and Noah's Sons (Part 2 of 4)

Stepping Into an Empty World

In Part 1, we traced Noah's family line from Adam to the edge of the flood. Now the waters have gone down. The turning point of the whole story is a single line: "But God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the livestock that were with him in the ark" (Genesis 8:1). The Hebrew zakar, "remembered," doesn't mean God had forgotten. In Scripture, when God remembers, He acts on a commitment. It's covenant language.

By the dates Genesis gives, Noah's family spent more than a year in the ark: the flood began on the seventeenth day of the second month of Noah's 600th year (Genesis 7:11), and the earth was dry on the twenty-seventh day of the second month of the following year (Genesis 8:14). Then God spoke: "Go out from the ark, you and your wife, and your sons and your sons' wives with you" (Genesis 8:16).

Noah's first act on dry ground was worship:

"Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And when the LORD smelled the pleasing aroma, the LORD said in his heart, 'I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done. While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.'" (Genesis 8:20–22)

Read that carefully, because it's surprising. Before the flood, God judged the world because "every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually" (Genesis 6:5). After the flood, God promises never to do it again, giving almost the same reason: "the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth." The flood didn't fix the human heart. Noah's family carried sin onto the new earth with them, as we're about to see. What changed was God's decision to deal with human evil through patience and promise rather than another worldwide judgment.

This post covers what happened next: the new rules for a new world, the covenant sealed by the rainbow, the way Judaism and the early church built on this chapter, and the strange, painful night in Noah's tent that ended with a curse.

New Rules for a New World

God's first words to Noah's family echo His first words to Adam and Eve, with some important differences:

"And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea. Into your hand they are delivered. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.'" (Genesis 9:1–4)

Genesis 1 also began with "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth" (Genesis 1:28). This is a second creation, a fresh start for humanity. But the world is different now. In Eden, God gave people "every plant yielding seed" for food (Genesis 1:29). Now animals are added to the menu, and with that comes "the fear of you and the dread of you." The harmony between humans and animals is broken.

The blood

The one restriction is blood. "Life" in verse 4 is nephesh, the Hebrew word often translated "soul," which means the life-breath of a living creature. Blood was understood as the carrier of that life. The law of Moses later gives the reason in full: "For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life" (Leviticus 17:11). Even as God allows people to kill animals for food, He reminds them that life belongs to Him. You may eat the meat, but you pour out the life.

Justice for murder

Then God turns to human life:

"And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning: from every beast I will require it and from man. From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image." (Genesis 9:5–6)

In Hebrew, the key line is a perfect mirror of six words: shofekh dam ha'adam / ba'adam damo yishafekh, literally "whoever sheds the blood of man / by man his blood shall be shed." The form of the sentence matches its meaning: what you do comes back on you.

Notice the reason given: "for God made man in his own image." Murder is so serious not because of what it does to society but because it attacks God's image. Before the flood, Cain was protected from vengeance and Lamech bragged of unlimited revenge. Now God establishes a principle of proportionate justice carried out "by man," which many interpreters see as the first foundation of human government. Paul echoes this when he says the governing authority "does not bear the sword in vain" (Romans 13:4).

Christians disagree about how this verse applies today. Many see it as a lasting basis for capital punishment, since it was given to all humanity and grounded in creation rather than in Israel's law. Others read it as describing the principle of justice without requiring the death penalty in every age, especially in light of Jesus' teaching on mercy. Both sides agree on the core point: human life has unique value because every person bears God's image.

The section closes the way it began: "And you, be fruitful and multiply, increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it" (Genesis 9:7).

The Covenant and the Rainbow

Then God makes a formal promise:

"Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the livestock, and every beast of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark; it is for every beast of the earth. I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth." (Genesis 9:9–11)

"Covenant" is berit, a binding agreement that defines a relationship. This is the first covenant the Bible describes in detail, though God first promised it before the flood: "I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall come into the ark" (Genesis 6:18). Three things make it unusual. It's universal, made not just with Noah's family but "with every living creature." It's unconditional, asking nothing of Noah in return. And it's permanent, an "everlasting covenant" (Genesis 9:16).

Then God gives it a sign:

"And God said, 'This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh.'" (Genesis 9:12–15)

The Hebrew word for "bow," qeshet, is the ordinary word for a warrior's bow, the weapon. Hebrew has no separate word for "rainbow." Many interpreters see a vivid picture here: God has hung up His battle bow in the sky, with its curve facing upward, away from the earth. The storm of judgment is over.

And notice who the sign is for. "When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant" (Genesis 9:16). It's a reminder for God more than for us, though of course we see it too. Every rainbow after a storm is God, in effect, renewing His word.

Were there rainbows before the flood? Some readers point to Genesis 2:5–6, where "a mist was going up from the land" before rain is mentioned, and conclude that the first rainbow appeared here. Others think rainbows already existed and God gave a familiar sight a new meaning, the way He would later make bread and wine into signs of a new covenant. The text doesn't settle it.

The rainbow reappears around God's throne. Ezekiel saw "the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud on the day of rain" surrounding the glory of God (Ezekiel 1:28), and John saw that "around the throne was a rainbow that had the appearance of an emerald" (Revelation 4:3). The promise made to Noah is woven into the throne room of heaven.

God later pointed back to this covenant as proof of His faithfulness to Israel: "This is like the days of Noah to me: as I swore that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth, so I have sworn that I will not be angry with you, and will not rebuke you" (Isaiah 54:9). The promise is specific, though. God promised never again to destroy the earth by flood. Peter warns that a final judgment is still coming, of a different kind: "the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly" (2 Peter 3:7).

The Laws of the Sons of Noah

Because every person alive is descended from Noah, Jewish teachers saw Genesis 9 as God's law for all humanity, long before Moses and Sinai. The rabbis eventually summarized it as seven commandments, recorded in the Talmud (tractate Sanhedrin 56a). Non-Jews, they taught, are not bound by the full law of Moses, but they are bound by these seven:

1. Do not worship idols.
2. Do not blaspheme God.
3. Do not murder.
4. Do not commit sexual immorality.
5. Do not steal.
6. Do not eat flesh torn from a living animal.
7. Establish courts of justice.

The Encyclopaedia Judaica describes these as the minimal moral duties enjoined by the Bible on all men. A Gentile who kept them was considered a "righteous Gentile." Several of them come straight from Genesis 9: the ban on eating blood (which the rabbis read as forbidding meat cut from a living animal), the ban on murder, and the call for human justice. The others were drawn from wider reasoning about what God required of Adam and Noah. It's worth knowing that the list took shape after the time of Jesus, and early Jewish sources didn't fully agree on the number or contents.

The idea is still alive. A modern movement of non-Jews, sometimes called B'nei Noach ("children of Noah"), tries to live by these seven laws under the guidance of Orthodox rabbis.

The Jerusalem Council

The same question came up in the early church. As Gentiles came to faith in Jesus, some Jewish believers insisted they be circumcised and keep the whole law of Moses (Acts 15:5). The apostles met in Jerusalem to decide. Peter's conclusion was clear: "But we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will" (Acts 15:11). Then James proposed a short list for Gentile believers:

"Therefore my judgment is that we should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God, but should write to them to abstain from the things polluted by idols, and from sexual immorality, and from what has been strangled, and from blood." (Acts 15:19–20)

The council's letter repeated it: "For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay on you no greater burden than these requirements: that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from what has been strangled, and from sexual immorality" (Acts 15:28–29).

Where did that list come from? Scholars offer three main answers.

An early form of the Noahide laws. Idolatry and sexual immorality appear in both lists, the decree's ban on blood echoes Genesis 9:4, and the council was addressing exactly the question the Noahide laws address: what does God require of non-Jews? Some scholars see the decree as an early version of the same tradition.

The laws for foreigners in Leviticus 17–18. Many scholars think the closer match is the law of Moses' rules for foreigners living among Israel. Leviticus 17 forbids sacrifices to other gods and eating blood, including animals not properly drained; Leviticus 18 forbids sexual immorality. That lines up with all four of James's items, and James immediately adds, "For from ancient generations Moses has had in every city those who proclaim him" (Acts 15:21).

Practical fellowship. Others, like New Testament scholar Darrell Bock, think the list reflects a general sensitivity rather than one specific source: these were the practices most likely to offend Jewish believers and make shared meals impossible.

These views can overlap, and some scholars think both Genesis 9 and Leviticus 17–18 stand behind the decree. What everyone agrees on is the council's starting point: salvation was by grace, for Jew and Gentile alike. The list wasn't a way to earn salvation. It was a way for a mixed church to live and eat together.

The Night in the Tent

After the soaring promises of the covenant, the story takes a sudden, uncomfortable turn:

"The sons of Noah who went forth from the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. (Ham was the father of Canaan.) These three were the sons of Noah, and from these the people of the whole earth were dispersed. Noah began to be a man of the soil, and he planted a vineyard. He drank of the wine and became drunk and lay uncovered in his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brothers outside. Then Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it on both their shoulders, and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father. Their faces were turned backward, and they did not see their father's nakedness." (Genesis 9:18–23)

A few details deserve attention.

"A man of the soil." The Hebrew is ish ha'adamah, literally "man of the ground," the same adamah from which Adam was formed and which was cursed in Genesis 3. Lamech had hoped Noah would bring relief from the cursed ground (Genesis 5:29). Here Noah works it, and the first thing he grows leads to trouble. Jewish tradition took "began" to mean Noah was the first person to plant a vineyard.

A second fall. Many commentators notice how closely this mirrors Eden. A man in a garden, eating fruit he cultivated, followed by nakedness, shame, covering, and a curse. Noah is a kind of new Adam on a washed earth, and like the first Adam, he stumbles. The flood cleansed the world, but not the human heart, exactly as God said in Genesis 8:21.

Noah's drunkenness. The Bible doesn't condemn wine itself; it's often a symbol of joy and blessing, given "to gladden the heart of man" (Psalm 104:15). But it consistently warns against drunkenness: "Wine is a mocker, strong drink a brawler, and whoever is led astray by it is not wise" (Proverbs 20:1). Genesis doesn't excuse Noah. It simply tells us what happened, and lets the consequences speak. "Lay uncovered" uses a reflexive form of galah, suggesting he uncovered himself.

"Ham, the father of Canaan." Notice that Genesis mentions Canaan twice in five verses, before anything bad has even happened. The writer wants us to have Canaan in mind. That will matter when we get to the curse.

The brothers' response. The contrast between the sons is the point of the scene. Ham "saw" and "told," spreading his father's shame. Shem and Japheth took a garment, walked in backward, and covered him without looking. One son exposed; two sons protected. Peter later wrote that "love covers a multitude of sins" (1 Peter 4:8), and this scene is an early picture of that idea.

The prophets would later treat exposing someone's nakedness while drunk as a serious wrong: "Woe to him who makes his neighbors drink—you pour out your wrath and make them drunk, in order to gaze at their nakedness!" (Habakkuk 2:15).

So what exactly did Ham do? That question has puzzled readers for more than two thousand years.

What Did Ham Do?

The text says only that Ham "saw the nakedness of his father." But when Noah woke up, he "knew what his youngest son had done to him" (Genesis 9:24), and he responded with a curse that echoed for generations. For something so severe, simply seeing seems like a small offense. That gap has produced four main theories. Bible scholars John Bergsma and Scott Hahn summarized the history of interpretation this way: readers since ancient times have identified Ham's deed as voyeurism, castration, or paternal incest, and they argued for a fourth.

1. Disrespect and exposure

The plainest reading is that Ham did exactly what the text says: he looked at his father's naked, drunken body and then went and told his brothers, mocking or shaming him. In an honor-based culture, publicly exposing a father's shame was a grave offense. The commandment "Honor your father and your mother" (Exodus 20:12) came later, but the value behind it was ancient. And the brothers' response, walking backward with a garment so they would not see, suggests that literal seeing was the problem. This is the view of many commentators, ancient and modern. Its weakness is that it struggles to explain why the punishment was so severe, and why it fell on Canaan.

2. Castration

The Talmud (tractate Sanhedrin 70a) records a debate between two famous rabbis, Rav and Shmuel. One said Ham castrated Noah; the other said he sexually abused him. The castration view had a clever logic: Ham deprived Noah of a fourth son, so Noah cursed Ham's fourth son, Canaan (Genesis 10:6 lists Canaan fourth). But nothing in the text hints at physical injury, and it seems to be an ingenious attempt to explain the curse rather than a natural reading.

3. Sexual assault on Noah

Some modern scholars argue that "saw the nakedness" is an idiom for a sexual act. Leviticus uses "see nakedness" that way: "If a man takes his sister... and sees her nakedness, and she sees his nakedness, it is a disgrace" (Leviticus 20:17). And Genesis 9:24 says Noah knew what Ham had "done to him," which sounds like more than looking. On this view, Ham took advantage of his drunken father. This would explain the severity, but it still doesn't explain why Canaan was cursed.

4. Incest with Noah's wife

The fourth view, first proposed by F. W. Bassett in 1971 and developed by Bergsma and Hahn in the Journal of Biblical Literature in 2005, takes the idiom one step further. In the law of Moses, "your father's nakedness" refers to your mother:

"You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father, which is the nakedness of your mother; she is your mother, you shall not uncover her nakedness. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father's wife; it is your father's nakedness." (Leviticus 18:7–8)

On this reading, Ham slept with his father's wife while Noah lay drunk, and Canaan was the child of that union. That would explain why Genesis keeps calling Ham "the father of Canaan" before anything happens, why the offense was so serious, and why the curse fell on Canaan specifically: he was the product of the sin. It also fits a pattern in Genesis, where Israel's later enemies come from illicit unions: Moab and Ammon from Lot's daughters ("Thus both the daughters of Lot became pregnant by their father," Genesis 19:36), and Reuben loses his birthright after he "went and lay with Bilhah his father's concubine" (Genesis 35:22). Leviticus 18 even closes by warning that the Canaanites were driven out for exactly these sexual practices: "Do not make yourselves unclean by any of these things, for by all these the nations I am driving out before you have become unclean" (Leviticus 18:24).

The main objection is the brothers' response. If the problem was a sexual act with Noah's wife, why does the story emphasize Shem and Japheth covering their father with a garment and not looking? Bergsma and Hahn answer that the account is compressed and the covering scene is a deliberate contrast, but critics find it more natural to read the covering as a response to literal exposure.

Where that leaves us

All four views are held by serious, believing scholars. The text is deliberately restrained, perhaps out of modesty. What's clear is that Ham did something shameful that dishonored his father, that his brothers responded with respect and protection, and that the consequences fell on Canaan. The next question is why.

Why Canaan?

Here is what Noah said when he woke up:

"When Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done to him, he said, 'Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be to his brothers.' He also said, 'Blessed be the LORD, the God of Shem; and let Canaan be his servant. May God enlarge Japheth, and let him dwell in the tents of Shem, and let Canaan be his servant.' After the flood Noah lived 350 years. All the days of Noah were 950 years, and he died." (Genesis 9:24–29)

"Servant of servants" is eved avadim, a Hebrew way of saying "the lowest of slaves," like "king of kings" or "holy of holies." And the curse falls not on Ham, the one who sinned, but on his son Canaan. Why?

Interpreters have offered several answers, and they aren't all mutually exclusive.

God had already blessed Ham. Genesis 9:1 says "God blessed Noah and his sons," which included Ham. Jewish tradition reasoned that Noah couldn't curse someone God had just blessed, so the curse went to the next generation.

Measure for measure. Ham dishonored his father, so the consequence came through his own son. A son who shamed his father would be shamed through his son.

Canaan was involved. Some ancient readers took "his youngest son" in verse 24 to mean Canaan, since Hebrew ben can mean a grandson as well as a son. On this view, Canaan took part in the deed himself. Ham is actually listed as Noah's second son, not the youngest, which some find supports this reading.

Canaan was the product of the sin. As we saw, the maternal-incest view says Canaan was conceived that night.

It's a prophecy about peoples. Most commentators also read Noah's words as prophetic, looking ahead to nations rather than just individuals. The Canaanites would later be judged for the very sexual sins listed in Leviticus 18, and Israel, descended from Shem, would take their land. After Joshua's conquest, the Canaanite Gibeonites became "cutters of wood and drawers of water for the house of my God" (Joshua 9:23). Later, "when Israel grew strong, they put the Canaanites to forced labor" (Judges 1:28). Noah's curse was fulfilled specifically on the Canaanites, within the history of Israel.

The blessings on Shem and Japheth

Notice how Noah blesses Shem: "Blessed be the LORD, the God of Shem." He doesn't bless Shem directly; he blesses Shem's God. Shem's great privilege is that the LORD will be his God. Shem's line, as Part 3 will show, leads to Abraham and Israel.

Japheth's blessing is a wordplay. "Enlarge" is yaft, from a verb meaning to make room or open wide, which sounds like Yefet, Japheth's name. His descendants would spread widely, and as we'll see in Part 3, many of them are connected with the peoples of Asia Minor, the Aegean and beyond. Then comes the beautiful line: "let him dwell in the tents of Shem." Early Christian writers saw this fulfilled when the gospel went to the Gentiles and non-Jewish peoples came to share in the blessings of Israel's God. Paul pictured it as a wild branch grafted into a cultivated olive tree: "you, although a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree" (Romans 11:17).

Noah lived another 350 years after the flood, dying at 950. By the numbers in Genesis 11, that means Noah was still alive when Abraham was born. Part 3 will come back to that.

The "Curse of Ham": How a Text Was Twisted

We can't leave this chapter without facing its darkest legacy. For centuries, Genesis 9 was used to claim that God had cursed Black Africans to slavery. It was called "the curse of Ham," and it was one of the most common religious defenses of the Atlantic slave trade and of slavery in the American South.

How it happened

Scholar David Goldenberg traced this history in detail in The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Princeton University Press, 2003). Over many centuries, interpreters quietly shifted the curse from Canaan to Ham, then linked Ham with Africa, and finally linked Africa with slavery. One reviewer summarized Goldenberg's findings: from the fifteenth century, the curse was transferred from Canaan to his father Ham and linked to the idea of Black inferiority, becoming an accepted justification for the slave trade.

Part of the confusion came from Ham's name. Writers claimed it meant "black," so Ham must have been Black. In 1843, the popular American author Josiah Priest argued exactly that. But the meaning is uncertain; it may be related to a Hebrew word for "hot," or to Kemet, Egypt's own name for itself, and nothing in Genesis describes anyone's skin color.

By the 19th century, the idea was everywhere. The Christian Century notes that in the mid-1800s the presidents of Mercer University and Dartmouth College cited the curse of Ham to defend enslaving others, and pastors and church authorities across many denominations used Noah's words the same way. In 1862, the Black Episcopal priest and scholar Alexander Crummell, educated at Cambridge, said this belief had become the near-universal opinion in the Christian world.

Why the text doesn't support it

The Bible's own words dismantle this reading on every point.

Noah cursed Canaan, not Ham. The text is explicit, three times: "Cursed be Canaan... let Canaan be his servant... let Canaan be his servant" (Genesis 9:25–27). Ham's other sons, including Cush, Mizraim (Egypt) and Put, are never cursed.

The Canaanites weren't African. Canaan's descendants lived in the land along the eastern Mediterranean, from Sidon down to Gaza (Genesis 10:15–19), and spoke a Semitic language closely related to Hebrew. As the Bible Odyssey article on this topic notes, to apply the curse to Africans, it must apply to Ham, which is the opposite of what the text says.

The curse was fulfilled in ancient history. As we saw, it played out in Israel's subjugation of the Canaanites in the time of Joshua and the judges. The Canaanites as a distinct people disappeared from history long ago.

Scripture honors Cush. The Bible speaks warmly of Cushites, the people of ancient Nubia and Ethiopia. When Miriam and Aaron criticized Moses "because of the Cushite woman whom he had married" (Numbers 12:1), God rebuked them. Through Amos, God told Israel, "Are you not like the Cushites to me, O people of Israel?" (Amos 9:7). The psalmist foresaw that "Cush shall hasten to stretch out her hands to God" (Psalm 68:31). And one of the first converts in Acts is an African: "there was an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians" (Acts 8:27), baptized on the road to Gaza.

All people bear God's image and share one ancestry. "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them" (Genesis 1:27). Paul told the Athenians that God "made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth" (Acts 17:26). In Christ, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28). And the final picture of God's people is "a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages" (Revelation 7:9).

Churches that repented

Many churches have publicly repudiated this teaching. The Southern Baptist Convention, which was founded in 1845 partly over the issue of slavery, passed a resolution in 1995 apologizing for its historic defense of slavery and racism. In 2017, it went further and explicitly rejected the "curse of Ham" theory as a justification for racism.

The lesson for Bible readers is sobering. A text was twisted for centuries, not because it was unclear, but because people wanted it to say something that served them. Reading carefully, in context, and letting the whole of Scripture speak is not just good scholarship. It's a moral responsibility.

A Covenant Bigger Than the Family

Genesis 9 holds two very different scenes side by side. In the first, God binds Himself by covenant to every living creature, hangs up His bow in the sky, and declares the dignity of every human being made in His image. In the second, the man God saved gets drunk, one son shames him, two sons cover him, and the chapter ends with a curse.

That contrast is the point. God's covenant didn't depend on Noah's family being perfect. It rested entirely on God's promise. The rainbow still appeared after the night in the tent. Human failure didn't cancel divine faithfulness, and it still doesn't.

And notice where the story is heading. The chapter closes with three brothers whose descendants will fill the earth: one line through which the LORD would be known as "the God of Shem," one line that would one day "dwell in the tents of Shem," and one line whose fate warned what sin does to a people.

Next in the series: In Part 3, we'll follow those three lines out into the world through the Table of Nations in Genesis 10, meet Nimrod, the first empire-builder, climb the Tower of Babel, and trace Shem's family all the way down to a man named Abram.

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References and Further Reading

Scripture. Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Key passages: Genesis 1:27–29, 6:5, 6:18, 7:11, 8:1–22, 9:1–29, 10:6, 10:15–19, 19:36, 35:22; Exodus 20:12; Leviticus 17:11, 18:7–8, 18:24, 20:17; Numbers 12:1; Joshua 9:23; Judges 1:28; Psalms 68:31, 104:15; Proverbs 20:1; Isaiah 54:9; Ezekiel 1:28; Amos 9:7; Habakkuk 2:15; Acts 8:27, 15:5–29, 17:26; Romans 11:17, 13:4; Galatians 3:28; 1 Peter 4:8; 2 Peter 3:7; Revelation 4:3, 7:9.

Ancient and Jewish sources

• Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 56a (the seven Noahide laws) and 70a (the debate over Ham's deed).
• Noachide Laws, Encyclopaedia Judaica.

Scholarship

• 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.
• F. W. Bassett, "Noah's Nakedness and the Curse of Canaan: A Case of Incest?" Vetus Testamentum 21 (1971): 232–37.
• David M. Goldenberg, The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Princeton University Press, 2003); review by Yaacov Shavit.
• Darrell L. Bock, Acts, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Baker Academic, 2007).
• Noah and Moses in Acts 15, New Testament Studies.

Web sources

• The Curse of Ham, Bible Odyssey.
• Noah gets drunk, then he curses Ham, The Christian Century.
• Blacks Damned by the Bible, The New York Review of Books (2006).
• Decree of the Council of Jerusalem: The Decree's Purpose, Grace Communion International.

For further reading

• Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 1–15, Word Biblical Commentary (Word, 1987).
• Kenneth A. Mathews, Genesis 1–11:26, New American Commentary (Broadman & Holman, 1996).