John Calvin Commentary Genesis 9:22

"And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without." — Genesis 9:22 (ASV)

And Ham, the father of Canaan. This circumstance is added to increase Noah's sorrow that he is mocked by his own son. For we must always remember that this punishment was divinely inflicted on him; partly because his fault was not a minor one, and partly so that God, in his person, might present a lesson of temperance to all ages.

Drunkenness in itself deserves, as its consequence, that those who deface the image of their heavenly Father in themselves should become a laughingstock to their own children. For certainly, drunkards subvert their own understanding as much as possible and deprive themselves of reason to such an extent that they degenerate into beasts.

And let us remember that if the Lord so grievously avenged the single transgression of the holy man, he will prove an avenger no less severe against those who are daily intoxicated; and of this we have sufficiently numerous examples before our eyes. Meanwhile, Ham, by reproachfully laughing at his father, betrays his own depraved and malignant disposition.

We know that parents, next to God, are to be most deeply reverenced; and if there were neither books nor sermons, nature itself constantly instills this lesson in us. It is commonly agreed that piety towards parents is the mother of all virtues. This Ham, therefore, must have had a wicked, perverse, and crooked disposition, since he not only took pleasure in his father’s shame but also wished to expose him to his brothers.

And this is no minor cause of offense: first, that Noah, the minister of salvation to humanity and the chief restorer of the world, should, in extreme old age, lie intoxicated in his house; and then, that the ungodly and wicked Ham should have come from the sanctuary of God. God had selected eight souls as a sacred seed, thoroughly cleansed from all corruption, for the renewal of the Church; but the son of Noah shows how necessary it is for people to be restrained as if by God’s bridle, however much they may be exalted by privilege.

Ham's impiety proves to us how deep the root of wickedness is in humanity, and that it continually sends out its shoots, except where the power of the Spirit prevails over it. But if, in the hallowed sanctuary of God, among such a small number, one fiend was preserved, let us not wonder if, today, in the Church, which contains a much greater multitude of people, the wicked are mixed with the good.

There is no doubt that Shem and Japheth were grievously wounded in their minds when they perceived such a monstrous display of scorn in their own brother and, at the same time, saw their father lying shamefully prostrate on the ground. Such a debasing loss of senses in the prince of the new world and the holy patriarch of the Church must have astonished them no less than if they had seen the ark itself broken, dashed to pieces, split apart, and destroyed.

Yet both of them overcame this cause of offense by their magnanimity and concealed it by their modesty. Ham alone eagerly seizes the opportunity to ridicule and rail against his father, just as perverse people are accustomed to seize upon causes of offense in others that may serve as a pretext for indulging in sin.

And his age makes him less excusable, for he was not a lascivious youth who, by his thoughtless laughter, betrayed his own folly, given that he was already more than one hundred years old. Therefore, it is probable that he perversely insulted his father in this way to acquire for himself the license to sin with impunity.

We see many such people today who most studiously pry into the faults of holy and pious people so that without shame they may hurl themselves into all iniquity; they even use the faults of other people as an occasion to harden themselves in contempt for God.