What is commonly known as "The Curse of Ham" was not bestowed upon Ham himself; rather, Noah indirectly cursed him through his son
Canaan. The
Talmud presents two possible explanations, one attributed to
Rabbi Abba Arikha and one to
Rabbi Samuel, for what Ham did to Noah to warrant the curse. According to Abba Arika, Ham
castrated Noah on the basis that, since Noah cursed Ham by his fourth son Canaan, Ham must have injured Noah with respect to a fourth son. Emasculating him thus deprived Noah of the possibility of a fourth son. According to Samuel, Ham
sodomized Noah, a judgment that he based on analogy with another biblical incident in which the phrase "and he saw" is used. In it reads, "And when Shechem the son of Hamor saw her (
Dinah), he took her and lay with her and defiled her." With regard to Ham and Noah, Genesis 9 reads, "[22] And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without. [23] And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid
it upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces
were backward, and they saw not their father's nakedness." According to this argument, similar abuse must have happened each time that the Bible uses the same language. On castration and sodomy, one Talmudic sage concludes that, "both this offense and that offense were committed." Although the story can be taken literally, in more recent times, some scholars have suggested that Ham may have had intercourse with his father's wife. Under this interpretation, Canaan is cursed as the "product of Ham's illicit union".
Jubilees The chronological scheme of the
pseudepigraphal
Book of Jubilees has Ham born in the year 1209
Anno Mundi (A.M.) – two years after
Shem, three before Japheth, and 99 before the flood. It gives the name of
his wife who also survived the flood as ''Na'eltama'uk''. After his youngest son Canaan was cursed in 1321 A.M., he left Mount Ararat and built a city named for his wife on the south side of the mountain. In 1569 A.M., he received a third division of the earth along with his two brothers for his inheritance: everything west of the
Nile River, and to the south of
Gadir. In 1639 A.M. when the nations were scattered following the failure of the
Tower of Babel, Ham and his children journeyed to their allotment, with the exception of Canaan, who settled in Shem's territory, thus receiving another curse. According to
Jubilees 10:29–34, this second curse is attributed to Canaan's steadfast refusal to join his elder brothers in Ham's allotment beyond the Nile, and instead "squatting" within the inheritance of Shem, on the eastern shores of the
Mediterranean, the region later promised to Abraham: And Canaan saw the land of Lebanon to the river of Egypt, that it was very good, and he went not into the land of his inheritance to the west (that is to) the sea, and he dwelt in the land of Lebanon, eastward and westward from the border of Jordan and from the border of the sea. And Ham, his father, and Cush and Mizraim his brothers said unto him: 'Thou hast settled in a land which is not thine, and which did not fall to us by lot: do not do so; for if thou dost do so, thou and thy sons will fall in the land and (be) accursed through sedition; for by sedition ye have settled, and by sedition will thy children fall, and thou shalt be rooted out for ever. Dwell not in the dwelling of Shem; for to Shem and to his sons did it come by their lot. Cursed art thou, and cursed shalt thou be beyond all the sons of Noah, by the curse by which we bound ourselves by an oath in the presence of the holy judge, and in the presence of Noah our father.' But he did not hearken unto them, and dwelt in the land of Lebanon from Hamath to the entering of Egypt, he and his sons until this day. And for this reason that land is named Canaan. –
Jubilees 10:29–34.The usurpation theory is similarly believed by
Albert Barnes. According to Barnes' exegesis of Genesis 10:18, the Canaanite clans scattered after the
Tower of Babel incident and settled in the southern Levant, where they named the region after themselves. It is unknown whether they were dispersed violently or not. However, Canaan's cousin,
Nimrod, had a "grasping tendency", making Barnes believe that Canaan had similar qualities. Thus, Canaan's settlement of the southern Levant was interpreted as a violent conquest, with Canaan "seizing upon the country with a high hand". ==Supposed tomb==