The Sons of Noah

Once docked on a mountain range in Turkey, Noah and his sons were about to begin building a whole new world, commissioned to do so by the Lord. The three primary people groups of the world today are traced back to the three sons of Noah, Shem, Japeth and Ham. Shem’s folk are known as the People of the Name, those who study the origin of things and therefore identify by naming them. Japeth’s folk were the peoples of aesthetics, those who beautify. Ham’s folk are the peoples of great passions, known as the hot-blooded ones. 

Purposefully and categorically, their names could also represent our desires, Shem as the desire to glorify, Japath as the desire to beautify and Ham as the desire of the flesh – and again, our desires in their origin are not fallen, only when we yield them to lust. And Noah mean rest, or being in a state of rest.

Unfortunately, as severe as the flood was, it did not eradicate sin in the earth, particularly the struggle of sin in our own hearts. And it is important to know that sin is here to stay, as an alternative choice to obedience, until the appointed time of the New Heavens and the New Earth when all things will become new. After the flood, Noah planted a vineyard and made a little wine to sip, sipped too much and ended up drunk in his tent.

Ham, the father of Canaan, was a messed up fella! According to the Judeo-Christian commentaries, Ham’s behavior ranges from a childish, immature mockery of his father’s nakedness, “Hey y’all look, dad got drunk and now he’s buck naked, ha, ha, ha” to something far more unimaginable which needs no mention here. We can surmise by now the vulgarity and lewd nature of Satan’s influence on an unregenerate soul. 

Regardless of whichever end of the spectrum Ham’s behavior (bad to really bad), Noah was so mad, that he cursed Ham’s son, Canaan, something that God Himself had not done, at least not directly, at the fall of man in the Garden. God cursed the realm appointed to man, the earth, but not Adam directly or his identity. Here is what he said,

“Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants he shall be to his brethren.” And he said: “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem, and may Canaan be his servant. May God enlarge Japheth, and may he dwell in the tents of Shem; and may Canaan be his servant. Gen 9:25-27

WOW, strong words! Ham, as Noah’s son, acted shamefully and as a result Noah, cursed his Ham’s son. It mirrors the truth that whatsoever you sow that shall you also reap! But also, begins a momentum of generational curses. If any family has a certain behavioral misalignment with God, then God deals with that to the third and fourth generation. Why? 

Not because He is trying to punish a the family endlessly, but in efforts to turn the family around to be rightly aligned with Him – so that His blessing can flow to and through the family. Just because your family has thought and been a certain way generationally, God trumps all traditions with His claim as our ultimate Father – His truth and His family ways, supersedes all our other family “stuff.”

Canaan means to be brought low. Isn’t it interesting that God calls the Promise Land, Canaan, and promises to give Israel the land of Canaan? Historically, we can trace anti-God rebellion back to this particular family line, which we will do. However, in Scripture’s usual metaphoric form, God is revealing that we have all been born and shapened in the iniquity of our parents (Ps 51:5). Canaan is the cursed lower nature in each one of us that is misaligned and rebels against God and in His mercy, calls us to overcome as the Israel of God. We are welcomed back into fellowship with God through the atonement of Jesus!

Let’s follow the generational line of Canaan. Canaan, to be brought low, begot Cush, Cush means black, and Cush begot Nimrod, which means rebellion or let us rebel! 

Now before any foolishness is attached to this as an affirmation of racist  allegory, Noah and his sons were all the same ethnicity!  God is revealing something far greater, if you are willing to pay attention.

We have now followed the seed of the Serpent through individuals of the line of Cain. Now we will see how the seed of the Serpent will bring about his corporate body, a religious and governmental system that will facilitate and present his false messiahs, what the Bible calls Mystery Babylon. Just as God designed redemption for the individual to be born again into the new man and the new man to be a part of the corporate One New Man, so Satan inverted this same blueprint by defiling an individual, and then forming a defiled corporate body, which is called Mystery Babylon.

It can not be underscored enough, that Satan’s effort is to replace God’s true blueprint with a defiled copycat version of his doctrine of deception, whether by direct apostasy or partial assimilation.