The rainbow (or “war bow”) is a sign of God’s covenant fidelity to Noah – he will preserve the created order and will not destroy the world in a flood again (even though men will continue to be sinners). Further, the rainbow is a sign that God himself will bear the judgment his people deserve — the war bow in the sky is aimed toward heaven. The promise of the rainbow is fulfilled at the cross, where the arrows of God’s just wrath against our sin pierced his Son, Jesus, as he bears God’s wrath for his people. Finally, the rainbow becomes a symbol of the church, the polychrome people of God who are arrayed around the throne of God and who serve as mediators (in Christ, The Mediator) of God’s blessing and judgment on the creation, thus manifesting the wisdom of God to men and angels. This church is now the ultimate sign of God’s covenant faithfulness.
But we also need to consider the meaning of the rainbow for God’s enemies. Does the rainbow have good news for them too? No and yes.
In the story that immediately follows (Genesis 9:18-29), there is another fall. Just as Adam fell in the garden, so there is another fall in Noah’s new creation. Noah, like Adam, is given a command to be fruitful and multiply. Noah, like Adam, is a gardener. He plants a vineyard and is the first to make wine, a drink fit for kings at rest (which is what Noah is — he is a royal figure and his name means “rest”). The wine is a sign of the new and better Eden, a glorified Eden. It is a sign of Noah’s kingly enthronement (corresponding to his right to exercise the royal prerogative of capital punishment).
But in the new garden, one of Noah’s sons, Ham, falls into sin. It is a recapitulation of Adam’s fall. (For arguments that Ham, rather than Noah, is in sin in this passage, see the interpretation of James Jordan, below.) Ham tries to seize his father’s robe prematurely and is cursed.
And so once again, there is an antithesis, as humanity is ripped in two. There is a division between the righteous and the unrighteous. There is a division between those who are in and under the rainbow and those who are not. The blessed and cursed are divided from one another.
Here’s the important point: The rainbow did not save Ham and his descendants. The rainbow did not keep Ham from getting judged and cursed. And neither will the rainbow keep the wicked from being judged today. The rainbow is not universal; it is a sign to Noah-like believers. Unbelievers certainly receive benefit from the Noahic covenant (e.g., stability in the creation, order in human society, etc.), but they are not sheltered from wrath under the rainbow because they do not trust in a sacrifice to cover their sins, as Noah did. Thus, the rainbow is no comfort to the wicked.
In fact, those who pervert the meaning of the rainbow and use it to promote an ungodly agenda (as LGBTQ+ advocates do) are inadvertently reminding God of his covenant and inviting judgment to fall on their own heads. The covenant does not provide indiscriminate protection for men. It only serves as sign of grace to those who share Noah’s faith and obedience. Those who steal God’s covenant sign and twist it’s meaning are actually begging for the curse to fall upon them. The sign of the rainbow does not belong to man as such, but to man as believer and worshipper of the true God.
Thus: when the rainbow is used at “gay pride” parades by men who glory in what should be their shame, and who openly celebrate a lifestyle which in their hearts they know to be an unnatural evil, they are actually putting a bulls eye on themselves. By waving the rainbow flag and flaunting their sin in God’s face, they are actually putting up targets at which the arrows of God’s wrath will be aimed. Those who take refuge in the greater Noah and in his ark (the church) can still view the rainbow as a promise of God’s patience and peace. Those who rebel against the Son, the Greater Noah, should not take any comfort in the sign of the rainbow. For them, God still holds a war bow in his hand. God still wages war against the wicked. He has strung his bow and is ready to shoot them down. Thus we read in Psalm 7 that God is a just judge and is angry with the wicked everyday (7:11); if the wicked do not repent, God sharpens his sword and bends his bow to make it ready (7:12); he prepares instruments of death, including making his arrows into fiery shafts (7:13). In Habakkuk 3, the prophet says God in his anger and wrath has made his bow ready and swears to use his arrows against the wicked (3:19). In Revelation 4, we see God’s throne surrounded by the rainbow. But then in Revelation 6ff, God begins to unleash fearsome judgments against the wicked (in response the prayers of his people), and he is looking right through the rainbow as he does so.
God remembers. He remembers his covenant to show mercy to those who take shelter under the rainbow, who seek refuge in the sacrifice of his Son. But remembering his people means judging their enemies, those who persecute and oppress and oppose them. God remembers his covenant – which means he remembers to judge the wicked.
Even so, there is good news. The story of the flood is an invitation to all, even the vilest of sinners. Consider what Noah took on the ark. He took his family – because God’s covenants always include families. He took clean animals – no surprise there, given his role as a priest. But he also took unclean animals. Why?
The inclusion of unclean animals on the ark means God intends to include people of every tongue, tribe and nation in his kingdom (since later on in Scripture, we find the unclean animals represent the Gentile nations). The inclusion of unclean animals means God invites sinners into his kingdom, to be washed in the baptismal waters and receive his salvation (since in many places in Scripture unclean animals represent the wicked). The door of the ark is open right now. This is the day of salvation. Whosoever wills may enter in and find grace. The “unclean” (= all of us!) are invited!
Traditionally the ark has been understood as a symbol of the church. Even church architecture terms have often been derived from Noah’s ark (e.g., nave). When theologians through the ages have said, “There is no ordinary possibility of salvation outside the church,” they often had the ark in mind as an analogy. What the ark was in Noah’s age, the church is in ours. The church is the place of safety from the outpouring of God’s wrath. The church is the ark of salvation, sailing us to safe harbor through God’s judgment.
Of course, Peter also makes a connection between the ark, the waters of the flood, baptism, and salvation. (1 Peter 3:18ff really deserves it’s own commentary, which I cannot give here.) The rain that fell in the flood, destroying the wicked and buoying the righteous to salvation, served as a precursor to new covenant baptism. And this baptism “now saves us,” as Peter says, because it is the sacramental means God uses to bring believers into union with Christ and into his church. It is not merely the cleansing of the flesh/body – as old covenant washings were. Rather, it is the sign that we have a clean slate – and therefore clean consciences – before God. In baptism, God gives the gifts of forgiveness (justification) and the Spirit (sanctification).
It’s been said the church is like Noah’s ark – it might smell on the inside, but it sure beats drowning on the outside. Everyone has problems with the church because the church is full of sinners (albeit, sinners saved by grace). But there is simply no other place to be a Christian. We ether learn how to live in the ark of the church or we perish.
Isaiah 11:1-10 is interesting in this connection. The prophet is giving a description of what the kingdom of Messiah will be like when it breaks into history. The prophet says the Messiah will make the wolf to dwell with the lamb, the leopard with the goat, the lion with the calf, and the cow and bear shall graze together, so they shall not hurt or destroy in the holy mountain. It’s a picture of what must have surely been the case inside the ark. God had to make the animals that would usually be at enmity to temporarily live at peace with one another. But the pairs of animals Isaiah lists describe not only animals that would normally be at odds with one another; the pairs also mix together clean with unclean (e.g., wolf – unclean, lamb – clean; leopard – unclean, goat – clean; etc.). Again, this exactly what happened in the ark: clean and unclean animals were at peace, and lived together as one big happy family. It is prophetic of what happens when after the resurrection of Jesus and the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost: the Gentiles begin to stream into the church, and blend into one new family with Jewish believers. The old division between clean and unclean, as it applied to people, food, etc., is dissolved in Christ.
The passage in Isaiah 11 ends with a glorious promise of a new “flood”: “the earth shall be as full of the knowledge of the lord as the waters cover the sea.” God flooded the world in death and judgment in Noah’s day. But in Messiah’s day there will be a new flood, a flood of grace and life. A Greater Noah has come, and he promises to flood the whole earth with a saving knowledge of God. The next flood will be a flood of love and mercy.
What does this mean for the enemies of God? There is still time for them to find salvation! Just as Noah preached to his contemporaries, so the gospel is going out to the ends of the earth right now. This is the day of salvation. A great, final cataclysmic judgment will come, but in the meantime, the offer of rescue stands. All are welcome. All are invited. Nationality does not matter. Sins committed do not matter. All who will come and enter Christ’s ark by faith and baptism are welcome, and assured of salvation. You are welcome to come and take refuge under the rainbow, so that you may know the arrows of God’s wrath that should be aimed for you have already been planted into Christ on the cross. Come to the Lord that you might be arrayed around the Lord’s throne as the sign of his manifold (= multicolored) wisdom. Come to the Lord that you might be flooded with grace.
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James B. Jordan on “The Sin of Ham”:
“The sin of Ham is the subject of much myth and nonsense. I recently read in an internet discussion that “commentators usually consider it to have been a homosexual attack.” I asked, “What commentators?” Commentators bring up this possibility only in order to dismiss it as nonsense. Yes, “uncovering nakedness” in Leviticus 18 does refer to sexual relations, but that phrase is not found here. Moreover, it is clear from the passage that Shem and Japheth did the opposite of what Ham did. They covered their father, which means Ham looked at him. That is all.
Now, the word “naked” here does imply that Ham espied Noah’s private parts. In Leviticus 18, to “uncover the nakedness” of another person means to uncover her or his genitals with a view to having sexual relations. Ham did not “uncover” Noah’s genitals, so there is no hint of sexual relations, but he did see Noah’s “nakedness.” Back in Genesis 3, when Adam and Eve became aware of their nakedness, they made coverings for their loins. Thus, “nakedness” is concentrated there.
Ham did two things. First of all, he entered Noah’s tent without permission, without “knocking.” This by itself was wrong, but understandable. Perhaps Ham had some interesting news, and just barged in. When he saw that Noah was asleep (on his back, presumably), he might simply have turned around quickly and left, and said nothing.
Ham’s serious sin was not that he happened to see Noah naked, but was his making an issue of it. He told his brothers about it. Here again, the text is subtle and we must be careful. Ham might have come out and said, “Hey, guys! I happened to wander in to father’s tent and saw he has uncovered himself. Do you think we should do anything?” If that had been the case, the matter would have been completely innocent. Clearly, however, something more was involved. Whatever Ham said provoked Shem and Japheth to engage in the purely ritual act of covering Noah, who after all was already covered by the tent itself; and whatever Ham said provoked Noah to pass a very severe judgment on his line through Canaan.
Did Ham come to his brothers and snicker about Noah’s condition? This seems unlikely behavior for a man already more than a century old. Moreover, in terms of eye-for-eye judgment, it does not fit with the curse put upon Canaan: Noah did not curse Canaan to be laughed at.
The subsequent verses give us all we need to reconstruct what Ham said: He advocated taking over rule and authority from Noah. The symbol of such authority was the robe, and by re-robing their father, Shem and Japheth rejected Ham’s suggestion. The curse on Canaan to be a slave and a servant fittingly matches the sin of Ham: Canaan will have his rule and authority stript from him.
Ham corresponds to the serpent in Genesis 3. The serpent advocated that Adam and Eve seize the forbidden fruit and make themselves gods. Ham advocates that Shem and Japheth seize the robe and make themselves rulers. In both cases, the sin is grounded in ambition and impatience, for the Tree of Knowledge was not permanently forbidden (Genesis 1:29), and Noah’s robe would descend to his sons in due time. In both cases, the sin is rebellion against authority, first against God’s fatherly authority, and then against man’s fatherly authority under God.
As noted above, the action of Shem and Japheth was purely symbolic. They did not need to cover Noah with a garment, for he was already covered by the tent. Their action was a symbolic affirmation of Noah’s authority, a symbolic rejection of Ham’s temptation.
We read that they took “the garment.” This might mean any garment, or it might imply that they took the garment Noah had laid aside (which means it must have lain far enough away from him that the sons did not have to disturb him to get it). Since weaving cloth and making garments were laborious and time-consuming before the modern world, it is not likely that Noah had many changes of clothing, so it is entirely possible that Shem and Japheth recovered Noah with the same garment he had earlier removed. Even if it was a different garment, it is symbolically equivalent.
Not only was Shem’s and Japheth’s action unnecessary, it was also carried out in a highly symbolic fashion. Each son took a corner of the garment and held it on his shoulder, and then the two of them walked backward and covered Noah. In part, this was so that they would not look at Noah’s nakedness, but they might have held the garment at their hips or somewhere else for this purpose. Again, the text would make perfect sense if the detail about the shoulders were left out: They took the garment and walked backward. Thus, the shoulder is important.
The word for shoulder is shechem, a word also used for persons and a town. In Genesis 33:18, Jacob arrived at Shechem. The king of the place was Hamor, and his son was named Shechem (Genesis 34). The town of Shechem was located in the col (saddle-shaped depression) between Mounts Ebal and Gezirim. As mountain peaks are “heads” in the Bible (Genesis 8:5; Revelation 17:9), this area was a shoulder leading up to these heads. Similarly, the son Shechem was a shoulder and support of his father, Hamor, the head of the town.
Shechem is not just the shoulder but the upper back and neck. A more precise term, kateph, refers to the shoulders as such. These two terms are regularly used for the idea of supporting something or holding something up, especially holding up the house of God (His general throne), or the Ark (His specific throne). Note the following in particular:
“The government will be upon His shoulders” (Isaiah 9:6). “I will set the key of the house of David on his shoulder” (Isaiah 22:22). “The holy objects they carried on the shoulder (Numbers 7:9). “Ark of God on their shoulders” (1 Chronicles 15:15).
From all this it should be clear that by carrying Noah’s garment on their shoulders, the two righteous sons were upholding his rule, position, and authority.
Two sons as two pillars holding up a screen before the ruler is replicated in the architecture of the Tabernacle and Temple, where pillars hold up screens before Yahweh’s private chambers (Holy Place) and throne room (Holy of Holies). Invasion of Yahweh’s chambers by pulling back the screens without permission is equivalent to spying out the nakedness, the “sabbath rest weakness,” of Noah or of any ruler (see 2 Chronicles 26:16-21; Esther 4:11; and James B. Jordan, The Death Penalty in the Mosaic Law, chapter 3: “The Death Penalty for Encroachment.”)
The parallel between Noah’s nakedness and the veiled Ark of the Covenant has another aspect. According to Numbers 4:5, when the Tabernacle was taken down the priests were to remove the inner veil and cover the Ark with it. Since they were not to look at the Ark, the veil must have hung on the inside of the posts on which it was hung (Exodus 26:31-34). The priests would take it down from its pillar-shoulders and walk backward, draping the veil over the Ark.
Does this means that a person’s private parts are “holy” in some sense? To my knowledge the Bible never directly speaks this way, but it is a fact that sinful exposures of nakedness are denotated in Leviticus 18 & 20 by a series of terms, most of which are also used in religious contexts (marked with *). These words are not used for such sins as murder and theft:
zimmah, lewdness, 18:17; 20:14
*tame’, defile, 18:20, 24, 27, 28, 30
*to`ebhah, abomination, 18:22, 26, 27, 29, 30; 20:13
tebel, perversion, 18:23; 20:12
chesed, disgrace, 20:17
*niddah, impurity, 20:21
We may also note that circumcision is performed on this central part of the body, signifying the sacrifice of the whole person.
We can draw these considerations together by saying that the private parts are a place of symbolic holiness and life, but that because of Adam’s sin, they become a place of symbolic defilement and death (Leviticus 15). Either way, they are not to be exposed to view except within the closed circle of a proper marriage.
(The notion that every part of the human body is the same, and thus all of it may be exposed equally, is a piece of rationalism not supported by the Bible. If the Greeks played their Olympic games completely naked, this does not justify the practice of having communal showers for men in Christian schools, college, and armies.)
9:24 says, “And Noah awoke from his wine,
And he knew what his youngest son had done to him.”
Noah’s awakening from his wine parallels Yahweh’s return to the garden in Genesis 3. It indicates that the time of rest is over, and the work of the enthroned king as judge must recommence.
According to this statement, Ham was Noah’s youngest son. According to Genesis 10:21, Japheth was the eldest.
Why is Ham called the youngest son at this point? This would seem to be a point better made in the course of a genealogy. The reason for its mention here is this:
A. 25And he said, “Cursed is Canaan.
B. A slave of slaves he will be to his brothers.
C. 26And he said, “Blessed is Yahweh, God of Shem.
D. And may Canaan be his slave.
C’ 27And may God enlarge Japheth,
B’ And may he live in the tents of Shem,
A’ And may Canaan be his slave.”
Noah now pronounces curses and blessings, as God did in Genesis 3. As God began with the serpent and a direct curse, so Noah begins with Ham (through Canaan) and a direct curse. Yahweh followed the curse on the serpent with judgments against the woman and the man, but Noah is in the happier circumstance of being able to pronounce blessings on his two older sons.
If we take the occurrences of Canaan and his curse as our guide, the paragraph appears to have a roughly chiastic form, as noted.
Recalling that the sin of Ham is like the sin of the serpent, we can note that the curse on Canaan is like the curse on the serpent. The latter was cursed to crawl along the ground, under the feet of humanity. He was brought low. Similarly, Canaan will be under the feet of his brothers.
As with a number of negative predictions in the Bible, the curse on Canaan may have a double aspect. On the one hand, “slave of slaves” may mean “lowest of slaves.” On the other hand, it might imply “best of slaves.” Which it is going to be will depend on how Canaan responds to God’s Word. In fact, the Canaanite Gibeonites became excellent slaves of the Tabernacle and Temple. Moreover, salvation is offered to Canaan in that he will serve the righteous, and be under their influence.
The other sons of Ham are not mentioned. Perhaps they did not show the marks of their father’s rebelliousness. Those who want to take this passage as some kind of prediction of the future course of all of human history must come to grips with the fact that the other three groups of Hamites are not mentioned.
Noah does not directly bless his other sons. Rather he blesses Yahweh, and links Him with Shem explicitly. This bestows the priesthood on Shem, and the later genealogies in Genesis carry this forward, specifying to Eber, and then to Abram, and then to Isaac, and then to Jacob. Why Shem rather than Japheth was given this honor we are not told, but possibly it is because Japheth was the eldest, and throughout Genesis the firstborn son is set aside in favor of a younger son – pointing to the need for a second Adam.
Japheth’s name comes from the word meaning “enlarge,” and Noah’s prayer for Japheth is thus a significant pun. It seems to mean that while Shem will carry the sabbatical duties of humanity, Japheth will major in the cultural tasks.
While it is true that Noah’s curse and prayer are not set forth as a prophecy, they do initiate history. As such we do find that the Canaanites were reduced to slavery under the rule of Shemites, Japhethites, and other Hamites. This is part of what Genesis 14 is about. Any attempt to transfer the statements about Canaan to other Hamites, as Arthur Custance has done in his writings, is illegitimate.
Historically, we see Israel interacting with other Shemites and Hamites throughout the Former Days, up to the exile. After the exile, in the Latter Days, Israel interacts with Japhethite nations primarily. This history, however, comes to an end with the end of Israel and the Oikumene in ad 70 (Matthew 23:35; Revelation 1-22), and it is completely illegitimate to try and characterize post-Biblical Shemites and Japhethites as “specialists in religion” and “specialists in culture” respective, as again Custance has done.
A’ Noah’s Life and Death:
28And Noah lived after the flood three hundred years and fifty years.
29And all the days of Noah were nine hundred years and fifty years.
And he died.
The first statement indicates that Noah lived in the new creation 350 years. But then we are linked with the old creation by saying that he a total of 950 years. The new creation was not a complete break, but a development of the old. The full new creation has not come.
And Noah died. He was a type of the Messiah to come, but was not the Messiah. His rule in history came to an end.
Conclusion
The principles revealed in this story are permanent and abiding. A few years ago, I witnessed them in action. A woman manager who had built up a business over several years came into a time of crisis in her life. She was depressed a good deal of the time and almost had a nervous breakdown. She had to depend on her assistant. The assistant decided that she was incompetent, and in fact had chafed under her authority for some time. He was convinced that he could do a better job. The assistant went to the owner of the business and told stories about the woman’s depression, arguing that she could not handle things any longer. The woman was demoted and the assistant was promoted. Within a couple of years, the newly promoted manager had wrecked the business through incompetence, and his life has gone downhill from there. I’ve seen this story more than once, and if you’ve lived for very long, you probably have as well.
Noah did nothing wrong. Ham had to search out Noah’s life (tent) and then make an issue out of something that was not really a problem: a couple of glasses of wine and an afternoon nap. But let us suppose that Noah was becoming a real drunkard, as some have imagined. What then? Even so, it was not Ham’s place to magnify this problem into an excuse for mounting a revolution.
Ham was the “youngest” son. Why is this stressed? Partly because it is the temptation of youth to think that they know better. Ham may not have said “Don’t trust anyone over 30,” but he was saying “Don’t trust anyone over 600.”
Ham had other options. He might have moved away with Noah’s blessing and started up his own culture, just as the assistant in the story above might have started his own operation, or moved into a genuinely open managerial position elsewhere.
Or, Ham might have waited with his brothers until Noah was ready to retire, or died.
But he didn’t.
Those who are impatient for authority will become slaves.”
See the three-part series: https://www.biblicalhorizons.com/biblical-horizons/no-96-the-sin-of-ham-and-the-curse-of-canaan-part-1/
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These notes go with my sermon from August 9, 2015: https://www.trinity-pres.net/audio/sermon15-08-09.mp3
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