Genesis 9

Noah was a righteous man who loved God and was saved from the flood of judgment. However, he was not a perfect man. We see here Noah getting drunk and laying uncovered in his tent. This was not a right thing to do based on the biblical instructions to not get drunk. Noah messed up. Even righteous people may have moments of sin in their lives. The difference is not that a righteous person never sins, but rather than a righteous person deals with sin and does not allow a mistake to become a pattern or life of sin. We must hold people accountable for their sinful decisions, but we also need to have a level of grace in dealing with them, especially in cases where repentance and contrition are evident.

Ham sees his father drunken on the tent floor and decided to handle it in a way that did not honor his father. He told his brothers- and the brothers purposefully covered their father in a way that showed respect. Here is the question- why did Noah curse Canaan (Ham's son) rather than Ham himself? We need to understand what he is saying. This is a prophetic statement regarding what Canaan would become. Read about the Canaanites in the Bible and you will find they were not godly at all. What Noah was doing is not by his statement forcing Canaan into a bad future, but rather by his wisdom he was pointing to what Canaan would become.

Noah and his sons all went on the Ark, but nowhere do we actually see a statement that Ham was a righteous man. Perhaps he was saved not by his own faith, but rather through the faith of his father. Ham does not appear in this case to be a good man and as a father it seems like the negative example carried on to his son and his descendants- the Canaanites. Noah did not curse the Canaanites to become the evil people they were, rather God gave him wisdom to see the trajectory his son and grandson were on and know the outcomes that this will lead to over time and the eventually outcomes when God steps in to deal with their sins.