Drunk & Naked - Genesis 9

9:1-17 - Now that the ground was all dry, Noah and his family got out of the ark with all the animals and started planting. God “blessed Noah” and gave them dominion over all the animals of the earth. God uses the phrase, “the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth,” which seems pretty crappy for the animals, but the footnotes link the word “fear” to Genesis 1:26-28 where God gives Adam “dominion” over the animals to take care of and use for his necessary purposes. They don’t have the law of Moses yet, so a dietary code hasn’t been explicit yet, but God does give the command to not “eat” blood, which a lot of cultures do so that was probably happening before the flood. Interestingly, part of the dietary code that God gives them is expanded on in the JST, where instead of just “every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you” and “don’t eat blood,” there are five verses that clarify what is meant by “meat.” Some of the highlights are, “blood shall not be shed, only for meat, to save your lives; and the blood of every beast will I require at your hands.” It’s not the free-for-all that we initially read in the regular version, but instead there is an emphasis on the respect for all life, animal and human. The IM comments that the JST “concerning the shedding of blood of animals is supported by Doctrine and Covenants 49:18-21, which says that the animals are to be used for food, but concludes with this warning: ‘And wo be unto man that sheddeth blood or that wasteth flesh and hath no need.’ President Spencer W. Kimball spoke at some length in a general priesthood meeting on the practice of killing animals simply for sport.” It sounds like our industrial animal agriculture industry is a blatant disregard of God’s commandment concerning the animals, which makes sense if you think about it. Surely God loves the animals as much as us and doesn’t want them to suffer needlessly. I’ve always subscribed to the vegan philosophy, but it’s difficult to implement, especially because I don’t cook, but after reading this I’m going to make another concerted effort to eat *better*, less meat. God also makes provision for people, saying “whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed; for man shall not shed the blood of man. For a commandment I give, that every man’s brother shall preserve the life of man.” This makes me wonder at what point the commandment “thou shalt not kill” was given. We know that Moses received it, and Noah received it here, but I always just assumed that it had been already forbidden previously. We know that killing Abel caused a big problem for Cain, but had he been taught that killing was wrong before he killed his brother? In addition to these commandments, God promises to “establish my covenant with you,” that the earth will never again be destroyed by flood. Again, I don’t necessarily see this as that big of a deal because there can still be lots of large floods everywhere, there can be massive fires, famine, drought, etc. There are no shortages of ways that people can suffer and die at the hands of nature, so taking floods off the table in a “kill everyone” scenario isn’t really that big of a comfort to me. Anyway, God gives a token of this covenant as a “bow,” which most interpret to be a rainbow. Again, not a big deal to me, so I don’t really understand. 9:18-29 – Noah has three sons and they are all married, and they all get off the boat and go about their various ways of survival. Noah “began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard.” But there was a complication, “he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent.” The article on this chapter from gospeldoctrine.com notes that this single verse “has greatly tarnished the reputation of the great prophet.” There are all kinds of speculations such as “Noah was the first person in human history at that point to grow grapes and make a juice that fermented, so he didn’t know what was going to happen.” I don’t buy that, people have been instinctually fermenting fruit and getting drunk from the dawn of time, it’s the only thing that makes sense. It’s also mentioned that we can’t hold Noah to the standard of our modern day Word of Wisdom because that wasn’t the law at the time. Also, let’s just cut the guy some slack, we’ve all done something we regret, even if this is a true account. The big problem occurs when his oldest son Ham “saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without.” Again, this doesn’t seem like that big of a deal, he fell asleep naked, maybe it was hot, it’s happened to the best of us. Ham’s two brothers, after Ham tells them that their father is naked, the other two brothers “took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backwards, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father’s nakedness.” Seems a little bit excessive, but whatever, different times I guess. Things seem to spiral out of control here because when Noah wakes up and finds out what happened, he is furious and curses his grandson Canaan, who is Ham’s son. It seems like we are missing a few steps here because all of this doesn’t make any sense. The article mentions that this whole debacle over Noah being naked and his son seeing him naked, is actually about the skin garment made by God and given to Adam before he left the Garden of Eden. Remember that God made A&E animal skin coats before escorting them into the cold and dreary world. According to tradition, Adam’s coat was passed down after his death. Apparently, Adam gave it to Enoch right before he died, who gave it to Methuselah who gave it to Noah, and Noah took it with him on the ark. Ham would have inherited this coat when his father died, but he got impatient, stole the coat when Noah was drunk, and gave it to his son Canaan. I think that the other brothers took it back and gave it to their father again, and that’s what this was all about. Is this true? Who knows, it doesn’t really make sense to me, but that doesn’t matter. Anyway, Shem and Japheth are blessed for this whole thing, and Ham and Canaan are cursed as “a servant of servants shall he be unto is brethren.” There is some quotes in the article about how this explains African slavery for the rest of time because Ham’s wife Egyptus was a Canaanite and she had the blood of Cain who was cursed, blah, blah, blah. I don’t buy that crap, and honestly hate hearing it, so I’m going to leave it alone. Anyway, Noah lived another 350 years after the flood and died with a total age of 950 years, which again we have to take with a grain of salt.