The entire earth
was eventually settled by the offspring of these three sons. This is not hard
to accept, even from the point of view of modern theoretical science.
Scientists theorize that there may have been many, “severe population
bottlenecks,” of human beings in the distant past based on their assumptions
about evolution.[1]
Of course, their conclusions are filled with speculations and interpretations
based on an atheistic worldview in that they might think, “we don’t know for
sure but it must be so because the alternative of the Bible being true is just
too horrible for us to imagine.” The point is that here is the ultimate
population bottleneck and there may have been others later until humanity got
on its feet, so to speak.
Use a population
growth calculator online and figure the growth rate where it was for the world
in the early 1960s, at 2.2%, and if I am not mistaken you will find that within
a thousand years there can be over 5
billion people, starting from just two.
It is possible
that, based on the change in conditions, Noah would not have known that
fermentation could take place and that he could get drunk. Or, perhaps the long
voyage and time of struggle surviving and leading his little tribe after
disembarking from the ark made him desperate to get roaring drunk as soon as it
was possible to do so. Either way, that is what happened.
To
see the nakedness of someone carries
with it a very wicked implication.
Leviticus
20:17 And if a man shall take his
sister, his father’s daughter, or his mother’s daughter, and see her nakedness,
and she see his nakedness; it is a wicked thing; and they shall be cut off in
the sight of their people: he hath uncovered his sister’s nakedness; he shall
bear his iniquity.
But, let’s say,
for argument sake, that this is not an idiom suggesting actual sexual contact
with either Noah or Ham’s mother which it appears to be.
Leviticus
20:11 And the man that lieth with his
father’s wife hath uncovered his father’s nakedness: both of them shall surely
be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.
To keep from
delving into aspects of this event that incite prurient interest in a reader or
listener let’s say for argument sake that this event involved only vulgar
disrespect and mocking. God had already blessed Noah and his sons in verse 1 of
chapter 9. So, Noah cursed Ham’s son, Canaan, and this curse was fulfilled in
Israel’s conquest of Canaan hundreds of years later. Noah blessed Shem and
Japheth further, due to their respect and merciful deed toward him and their
mother, one assumes, and prophesied that Canaan would be their servant, which
proved very true as what is today called Palestine, where Canaan dwelt, became
the victim of many conquests from Israel to the Persians to the Turks to the
Crusaders and the Turks again to the British and French with many in between.
Palestine, as it is referred to often today from the word Philistines and a
Roman insult against the Jews, was an avenue of conquest between the warlike
culture of Babylonia and Assyria to Egypt.
[1] John Hawks, Keith Hunley, Sang-Hee Lee, Milford Wolpoff, “Population Bottlenecks and
Pleistocene Human Evolution,”
Molecular Biology and Evolution,
Volume
17, Issue 1, Pp. 2-22.
www.mbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/17/1/2.Full
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