The Injustice of Noah's Curse

Following the flood and the rainbow, Genesis 9 has one final story about Noah. The patriarch gets drunk, strips naked, and passes out. One of his sons, Ham, sees Noah naked. When Noah wakes up, he utters a curse of slavery against not Ham, but one of Ham’s sons, Canaan. Why is Noah’s reaction so severe? And why does he curse Canaan, who did nothing? For more than two thousand years, interpreters have tried to make sense of what seems like an
injustice in Noah’s reaction. The goal of good interpretation, it would seem, is to show howDLif we just understand the right details or contextDLNoah’s curse has hit the target with the proper
punishment. The most notorious examples of interpretations following this agenda are appeals to Noah’s curse as biblical support for denigrating or subjugating others, especially Black people. Modern scholars with no interest in weaponizing the text take the same interpretive approach but with a slight qualification, their rationale for justifying the curse is that they are trying to read in sync with the Israelite authors who they presume intended to write a just curse against the
Canaanites. Although this has been the normative trend in interpretation for centuries, Justin Michael Reed shines light on a different path. Instead of trying to explain away the injustice
of Noah’s curse, Reed affirms that Noah’s curse is unjust, and he uses critical race theory, speech act theory, intertextuality, and irony to make sense of the injustice of Noah’s curse in its literary context.

Author Biography

Justin Michael Reed is Associate Professor of Old Testament at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. This monograph expands research begun in his dissertation, which won the Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise.