Was Ham's sin in Genesis 9:22 incest with Noah's wife, or something done to Noah himself?
A viewer asks whether Ham's sin in Genesis 9:22 was incest with his father's wife, as the idiom 'uncovered his father's nakedness' may suggest, or an act against Noah himself.
Answer
I'm not sure what you mean by that: any sexual urge by him would then necessarily be carried out by his wife? Why? Well, first of all, we don't even know it was Ham. And that's why the curse was put on him. Yeah, but it's also possible to uncover Noah's nakedness. And this is where, when you have an ambiguity in the text, you really have to be cautious about making any conclusions. And you've got issues here that are ambiguous. One is whether Ham committed the sin. The other is whether his son committed the sin. And the other is whether uncovered nakedness means Noah's nakedness or raping his wife. And we don't know. So this is one of those passages where we've gone now for 4,000 years without really knowing what the proper conclusion should be. And some Bible passages are like that. And heaven has been stingy on this. It's not given us the answer, because you can consult 10 exegetes and they'll give you 10 different answers on this.