Ham (son of Noah)

Ham(inHebrew:חָם), according to theTable of Nationsin theBook of Genesis, was the second son ofNoahand the father ofCush,Mizraim,PhutandCanaan.
Ham's descendants are interpreted byJosephusand others as having populated Africa. The Bible refers toEgyptas "the land of Ham" in Psalm 78:51; 105:23, 27; 106:22; 1 Chronicles 4:40.
Since the 17th century, a number of suggestions have been made that relate the nameHamto a Hebrew word for "burnt", "black" or "hot", to the Egyptian wordḥmfor "servant" or the wordḥmfor "majesty" or the Egyptian wordkmtfor "Egypt".A 2004 review of David Goldenberg'sThe Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity and Islam(2003) states that Goldenberg "argues persuasively that the biblical name Ham bears no relationship at all to the notion of blackness and as of now is of unknown etymology."
Genesis 5:32indicates that Noah became the father ofShem, Ham andJaphethat the age of 500 years old, but does not list in detail their specific years.  (Noah was 600 years old at the time of the flood in Genesis 7.) An incident involving Ham is related inGenesis 9:20–27:
What is commonly known as "The Curse of Ham" was not bestowed upon Ham himself; rather, Noah indirectly cursed him through his sonCanaan.
TheTalmudpresents two possible explanations, one attributed toRabbi Abba Arikhaand one toRabbi Samuel, for what Ham did to Noah to warrant the curse.
According to Abba Arika, HamcastratedNoah on the basis that, since Noah cursed Ham by his fourth son Canaan, Ham must have injured Noah with respect to a fourth son. Emasculating him thus deprived Noah of the possibility of a fourth son.
According to Samuel, HamsodomizedNoah, a judgment that he based on analogy with another biblical incident in which the phrase "and he saw" is used. InGenesis 34:2it reads, "And when Shechem the son of Hamor saw her (Dinah), he took her and lay with her and defiled her."  With regard to Ham and Noah, Genesis 9 reads, "[22] And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without. [23] And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laiditupon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faceswerebackward, and they saw not their father's nakedness."According to this argument, similar abuse must have happened each time that the Bible uses the same language. The Talmud concludes that, in fact, "both indignities were perpetrated."
Although the story can be taken literally, in more recent times, some scholars have suggested that Ham may have had intercourse with his father's wife.Under this interpretation, Canaan is cursed as the "product of Ham's illicit union."
The chronological scheme of thepseudepigraphalBook of Jubileeshas Ham born in the year 1209Anno Mundi(A.M.) – two years afterShem, three before Japheth, and 99 before the flood. It gives the name ofhis wife who also survived the floodasNa'eltama'uk. After his youngest son Canaan was cursed in 1321 A.M., he left Mount Ararat and built a city named for his wife on the south side of the mountain. In 1569 A.M., he received a third division of the earth along with his two brothers for his inheritance: everything west of theNile River, and to the south ofGadir. In 1639 A.M. when the nations were scattered following the failure of theTower of Babel, Ham and his children journeyed to their allotment, with the exception of Canaan, who settled in Shem's territory, thus receiving another curse.
According toJubilees10:29–34, this second curse is attributed to Canaan's steadfast refusal to join his elder brothers in Ham's allotment beyond the Nile, and instead "squatting" within the inheritance of Shem, on the eastern shores of theMediterranean, the region later promised to Abraham:
The usurpation theory is similarly believed byAlbert Barnes. According to Barnes' exegesis of Genesis 10:18, the Canaanite clans scattered after theTower of Babelincident and settled in the southern Levant, where they named the region after themselves. It is unknown whether they were dispersed violently or not. However, Canaan's cousin,Nimrod, had a "grasping tendency", making Barnes believe that Canaan had similar qualities. Thus, Canaan's settlement of the southern Levant was interpreted as a violent conquest, with Canaan "seizing upon the country with a high hand".
A tomb inGharibwal,Pakistan, has been claimed by local residents to be the site of Ham's burial since 1891, when Hafiz Sham-us-Din of Gulyana, Gujrat, claimed Ham had revealed this to him in a dream. A plaque on the tomb since erected over the 78-foot-long (24 m) gravesite states that Ham, locally revered as a prophet, was buried there after having lived 536 years.
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