Skip to main content

Genesis 9: Drinking, Animals, Nudity

Image
By
Image result for Noah drunk
Dad's drunk and naked.  Again.


Soon after promising to never again to kill off all life, God realized how imprudent this was and gave himself an out.  To the Noah family He then said, “You know, when I said the other day that I wouldn’t kill humanity off again, I just meant I wouldn’t do it by flood.  You got that, right?”

“Sure, Lord, whatever You say,” said Noah.

“All right, then: that’s the promise.  You be careful now.  And you’d better take care of all my creatures.  I’m watching you.”

“Lord?” asked Noah.

“Yes?”

“Where’d those penguins come from?  And where’d they go?  They were cute.”

“Never mind.  And if any of you write about this story, don’t mention them.  Or the kangaroos.  Or the llamas.”

“Why not, Lord?”

“Don’t ‘why not’ Me!  I am the Lord, thy God!  That should be enough!  Now dig this rainbow.  Whenever you see this, remember that it means that I’m not going to kill you all.  By flood.”

“All right, Lord,” said Noah’s family.

Noah’s sons went on to reproduce.  Ham did well enough that he fathered a whole nation, called Canaan.  Noah went into farming, and became the first tiller of the soil—unless you count Cain, who never thought to lay claim to the title “First Tiller of the Soil.”  Noah was a much better self-promoter.

Noah planted grapes and made lots of wine.  He enjoyed the wine a little bit more than he should, and would get drunk and naked and pass out.  Noah’s sons learned to put up with this, but tried to be discrete.  One night after Noah had collapsed after a particularly wild bender, Ham saw Noah naked and told his brothers about it.  The three brothers then slipped into Noah’s tent to put his coat over him so he wouldn’t die of hypothermia.  Apparently Noah was embarrassed that Ham had seen him naked, and provoked by a raging hangover, he tore into Canaan, swearing that he wanted to see Ham’s brothers wreck the country at Ham’s expense.  This abuse would have been intolerable if Noah’s boys had to tolerate it for a long time, but as it turned out this only went on for 350 more years, so time just flew.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How the Lemon was Invented

By
Lemons How do you make a lemon?  Silly question, isn’t it?  You just take the seeds out of one and plant them, and wait for the tree to come up, right?  That’s true, but it hasn’t always been that easy.  Lemons today are a widely cultivated citrus fruit, with a flavor used in cuisines of countries where no lemon tree would ever grow.  You might think that it was just a matter of ancient peoples finding the trees, enjoying their fruit and growing more of them, but that’s not true.  The lemon is a human invention that’s maybe only a few thousand years old. The first lemons came from East Asia, possibly southern China or Burma.  (These days, some prefer to refer to Burma as Myanmar .  I’ll try to stay out of that controversy here and stick to fruit.)  The exact date of the lemon’s first cultivation is not known, but scientists figure it’s been around for more than 4,000 years.  The lemon is a cross breed of several fruits.  One f...
6 comments
Read more

The Massachusetts Codfish License Plate Fiasco of 1928

By
A 1928 Massachusetts license plate with a bad omen! 1928 was a bad year for the Massachusetts codfish yield.  Whose fault was it?  The Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles', of course—or you might think so, to listen to some of the irate fishermen that year. The problem started with the new license plate design.  At the time, it was common for states to issue brand new license plates every year, and Massachusetts was no exception.  The new plates for 1928 featured something revolutionary, too: it was the first time any state put a picture of anything on the plate.  Since Massachusetts was known for cod, the picture the RMV chose was, logically, a codfish.  It appeared at the bottom of the plate.  In the bottom left-hand corner was the year, 1928.  In the bottom right-hand corner was the state, written “Mass.”  And in the middle was the codfish—the first picture of anything that ever appeared on an American license plate...
10 comments
Read more

From Holy Water to the Automat: Great Strides in Self-Service

By
  One of the greatest inventors of the ancient world was Heron Alexandrinus, aka Hero of Alexandria, who racked up an incredible 80 inventions throughout his lifetime in the first century CE.  One of Heron’s remarkable inventions was an early (and possibly the first) steam engine.  But one that we moderns might least expect is one that we seldom associate with the ancient world: the vending machine. Heron’s vending machine sold one thing: holy water.  He invented it in order to stop the theft of holy water from the temples.  The way it worked was you’d put a 5 drachma coin in a slot.  The coin would land on one end of a lever which, when depressed, would allow holy water to trickle out of a spout.  As long as the coin was balanced on the end of the lever, the water would keep coming.  The coin would remain balanced for a short while.  When it dropped off the lever, a counterweight was released, closing the spout and preventing anyone from tak...
1 comment
Read more