Weekly Torah Reading Noaḥ October 29, 2022

 

Minor Mysteries

After the great flood had subsided, Noah planted a vineyard. In due time it bore fruit, and Noah made some wine from it. Perhaps because he had not consumed any alcohol for some time, he became inebriated and “uncovered himself” in his tent. This is, of course, an embarrassing incident, especially for someone who had previously been described as “a righteous man” (Gen 6:9—though the following phrase, “blameless in his time” suggested to some that in another day he might not have been considered so righteous).

 

At this point the Bible reports that Ham, one of Noah’s three sons, “saw his father’s nakedness” and told his brothers outside. When Noah woke up, he “knew what his younger son [Ham] had done to him” and exclaimed, “CuTrsed is Canaan [Ham’s son], a slave of slaves shall he be to his brothers” (Gen 9:20-25).

 

Two questions arise out of this brief incident. First, if Noah had been dead drunk, how could he have known what his younger son “had done to him”? If that phrase referred to Ham’s seeing his nakedness—well, “seeing” doesn’t usually leave any traces, so how did Noah know?

 

Another mystery: Even if, by some means or other, Noah discovered what Ham had done, why should Noah have cursed Ham’s son Canaan, and not Ham himself? There is no indication that Canaan was a party to Ham’s offense. This question did have an answer: God had already blessed Noah and his sons in Gen 9:1. A person cannot curse someone whom God has blessed, so Noah did the next best thing and cursed Ham’s son Canaan (see the Dead Sea Scrolls text 4Q252, as well as Genesis Rabba 36:7).

 

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The Torah reading ends with an equally brief and puzzling incident, the building of the Tower of Babel. According to the text, the ragtag band of humanity (apparently all of it) arrived at some point in the land of Shinar (Babel). At this stage of things, according to Gen 11:1, “The whole earth was of one language and the same words.” Under these circumstances, the people resolved to create a city in Babel: “Come let us build a city for ourselves, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves so that we will not be scattered all across the land.”

 

This raised an obvious question for interpreters: What was so bad about this building project? What did God find so objectionable in the people’s wanting to build a city and thereby allow them to dwell in harmony behind its walls?

 

Considering the matter, ancient scholars concluded that the tower was the source of the problem. After all, specifying that its top was to reach up to heaven suggested some hubristic intent—perhaps in order to gain control over the rain supply and thereby usurp one of God’s most important prerogatives—indeed, perhaps to make war against God Himself. This understanding of the intent behind the tower came to predominate among interpreters, which is why this story is still known today as the Tower of Babel and not, for example, the City of Babel (Note that the tower is not mentioned at the conclusion of the story, while the building of the city is—as if stopping the building, and not the tower, were the true purpose of God’s intervention; see Gen 11:8). Some interpreters went on to suggest that the tower’s real purpose was to write the names of their idols on the tower’s very top—surely enough to merit divine intervention.

 

Interpreters had one final mystery: What was the “one language” that all humans shared at first (Gen 11:1)? Most answered: Hebrew. There were some strong arguments in favor of this conclusion. After the creation of Eve, Adam declares: “This one will be called woman (’ishah), since from man (’ish) she was taken (Gen 2:23). Certainly these two words seemed to be etymologically related. Since the words for “man” and “woman” were quite different from each other in Greek, Latin, Aramaic, Akkadian and other languages, this certainly strengthened the notion that the original language was indeed Hebrew.

 

What is more, when God was creating the world, He said “Let there be light,” and “Let us make man.” In the Torah, these words could have been written in any language—and indeed, elsewhere in the Bible, certain verses are written in Aramaic. Moreover, these words do not appear in Hebrew because God was addressing the Israelites; He was speaking to (or in the presence of) His own angels. The conclusion was almost inescapable: Hebrew was the language of heaven, “the holy tongue” (leshon ha-kodesh) as it was sometimes called. Modern scholars used to think that this honorific name was a creation of rabbinic times, until the phrase “holy tongue” turned up recently in one of the Dead Sea Scrolls (4Q464, frag 3, col 1:8).

 

Shabbat shalom!