Most interpreters of Genesis 9:18–29 read with a presumption that Noah’s curse must be justified and that Ham, Canaan, or the Canaanites therefore deserve punishment. Examining problems with this pervasive “presumption of Canaanite guilt” opens alternative readings of Noah’s curse as drunken, excessive, misdirected, or unjust and helps resist its continued weaponization.
See also The Injustice of Noah’s Curse (Oxford University Press, 2025)
By Justin Michael Reed
Louisville Seminary
July 2026
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Article Comments
Dear Kenneth, Thank you for…
Dear Kenneth,
Thank you for your comment, and I am sorry about any confusion. The decision to summarize rather than quote the verses was not primarily to save space. I thought that paraphrasing the content of those 12 verses would be sufficient for most readers, or the more curious ones, like you, could read the passage in a Bible. There are several questions that these verses bring up for a typical reader and, since I did not want want to cover most of those questions, my summary was focused on one thing: the details that relate to a certain presumption readers typical bring to the text. David Goldenberg's article for The Bible and Interpretation, which is also about how people have interpreted this passage, similarly summarizes the Bible passage rather than quote it.
My book, The Injustice of Noah's Curse, includes my arguments on how to interpret many details in this story. In the book, I quote Genesis 9:18 - 29 on pages 1 - 2.
I am a little confused. You write a long article about the curse, but you don't have any space in the article to actually include the curse itself fully written out. I had to go look it up on my own. If you wrote a book on this, did you put the full verse in the book? I think it could have fit.