What Happened to My Slave?
The first mention of slavery, a second grade human, takes place in the story of Noach. After leaving the ark, Noach plants a vineyard and makes wine. He gets drunk and exposes himself and his son Cham notices.
Cham disrespectfully tells everyone that his father is asleep, drunk and naked and his son Cana’an grabs the opportunity to castrate him. When Noach sobers up and realises what took place, he curses Cana’an and all the descendants of Cham to be slaves to the descendants of Shem and Yafet.
Wow, that's a wild story but it goes further. The commentaries (Rashi and others) explain that the reason Cana'an castrated his grandad was an inheritance calculation to limit the heirs of Noach. Who would inherit the world as they knew it. Talk about family issues.
The 3 sons of Noach are the forefathers of all the nations today. Do we know who these nations are? Well in Genesis 10 the Torah outlines for us exactly who these nations are. It's very difficult to pinpoint them all but what's clear is that the descendants of Cham inhabited regions in Africa and some parts of the middle East, specifically the Land of Cana'an, which would later become the land of Israel.
A basic look at the history of slavery would seem to reflect the curse of Noach. However, now that slavery has been abolished in democratic countries around the world, what happened to the curse?
The answer to this, I believe, lies in understanding the pendulum of Human History. God created man and placed him in the Garden of Eden. Man sinned and was kicked out of the garden. He descended to the lowest levels of immorality, beneath that of animals. Since then, man has been working his way back up to his former stature, to be welcomed back into the Garden of Eden.
To understand where we are heading, we simply have to read Genesis in reverse and rectify the sins that were committed in order to undo the results that were created.
The flood came because humanity had corrupted itself sexually but the final straw was that of theft which in the Hebrew text is called, ‘Hamas’. Greed is the root of all evil and even though an entire generation was killed for their greed, it survived the flood in Cham and his descendants. Cana’an was concerned about sharing the world with too many cousins so he castrated Noach.
The consequence of not knowing that God is abundant beyond our imaginations and that the world is big enough for all of us, is a life of constriction and limitation. Whether it is literal slavery and oppression or a figurative slavery to our own capped perspective, the life lived is subhuman and far less than what our loving God wants for us.
The message is clear for each and every one of us in our personal lives but can we take the lessons of Genesis and apply them to what is happening in the world today from a geopolitical perspective?
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