Justin Michael Reed, "The Injustice of Noah's Curse" (Oxford UP, 2025)

Summary

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Podcast Summary: New Books Network

Episode: Justin Michael Reed, "The Injustice of Noah's Curse" (Oxford UP, 2025)

Date: May 10, 2026
Host: Michael Morales
Guest: Dr. Justin Michael Reed

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Overview

This episode centers on Dr. Justin Michael Reed’s groundbreaking work, The Injustice of Noah's Curse. Reed, an associate professor specializing in the Old Testament and African American hermeneutics, shares a novel perspective on the much-debated passage in Genesis 9—Noah’s drunkenness and the subsequent cursing of Canaan, Ham’s son. The discussion moves beyond traditional approaches, interrogating the longstanding assumption that the curse was justified, and re-examines its implications for biblical justice and the depiction of outsiders (the Canaanites) in Israelite literature.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Background of the Book and Reed’s Interests

[02:14 – 07:04]

• Reed’s research focuses on the intersection of biblical studies, race, and the history of interpretation—particularly the consequences of weaponized biblical texts.
• The Genesis 9 story’s "curse of Canaan," commonly (and incorrectly) referred to as "the curse of Ham," has been notoriously used to justify various forms of oppression—including against Black people, but also Jews, Muslims, heretics, and others.
• Reed’s engagement with this passage began in a church Bible study where a parishioner’s skeptical challenge to standard interpretations prompted deeper inquiry:

  “I was inspired by her resistance to these academic arguments...I just kept seeing, as I went through more and more sources, patterns, similarities, and bigger hermeneutical issues—bigger issues with how we make meaning of the text.”
  (Justin Michael Reed, 06:13)

• The story is summarized: Noah, after the flood, becomes drunk and is seen naked by Ham. Instead of punishing Ham, Noah curses Ham’s son, Canaan, which has perplexed readers and fueled centuries of harmful misreadings.

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2. Survey of Major Interpretations and Their Flaws

[07:17 – 16:44]

• Reed reviews the dominating scholarly efforts to rationalize the justice of Noah’s curse, from hypothetical reconstructions of earlier source versions (source criticism) to attempts at reinterpreting idiomatic expressions or social customs.
• Most interpretations start with what he identifies as a “presumption of Canaanite guilt”—the belief that, in some way, Canaan (or the Canaanites) must have deserved the curse and that the biblical text is fundamentally just.

  “My argument is not just that there's specific things wrong with this or that interpretation...But my argument is that overall this is a presumption that is not being interrogated. It's not being questioned, it's not being critiqued, it's not being defended. People are just starting with this presumption.”
  (Justin Michael Reed, 13:24)

• Reed notes that this presumption persists across nearly all traditions and times. He advocates that interpreters must be self-critical about such foundational assumptions, as they impact not only readings of Genesis 9 but broader theological and exegetical coherence.

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3. Reed’s Novel Reading of Genesis 9

[19:31 – 27:39]

• Reed replaces the “presumption of Canaanite guilt” with other, critically examined assumptions drawn from critical race theory, speech act theory, and a commitment to read the passage intertextually—connecting it to themes and language elsewhere in Genesis.
• He highlights key narrative echoes:
  • Lamech’s naming of Noah (Genesis 5:29) evokes hope for relief from the ground’s curse, but soon, God “regrets” creating humanity using the same Hebrew root as Noah’s name.
  • Noah’s post-flood “fall” parallels Adam and Eve’s: vines are planted, fruit is consumed, nakedness is exposed, but this time, Noah loses consciousness, unlike Adam and Eve, who gain awareness.
  • The injustice climaxes with Noah delivering a misdirected curse—contrasting with God’s previous, measured judgments in Eden and against Cain:

  “The climax of this story is where you would expect God to show up like God showed up in Eden...In this case, God doesn't show up. And Noah steps in...And Noah's punishment doesn't match that justice at all.”
  (Justin Michael Reed, 25:56)

• Reed’s key claim: Genesis 9 deliberately presents Noah’s curse as unjust, showing that even the “righteous remnant” is flawed and that the new beginning after the flood fails to remedy humanity’s underlying problems.

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4. Narrative Function within Genesis as a Whole

[27:47 – 34:30]

• This unjust curse, Reed argues, is pivotal for understanding Genesis and the Torah's larger trajectory.
• The story demonstrates that God’s involvement changes post-flood—human leaders like Noah are inadequate at delivering justice, necessitating God’s more direct new covenant starting with Abraham.
• The mixed portrayal of Canaanites in Genesis versus their vilification in the rest of the Torah (Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy) is significant:

  “The biblical authors are capable of portraying the Canaanites who they hate—portraying them compassionately when it is in the biblical author's own interest, because they have another priority that's more important. In this case, the priority is to depict Noah negatively...”
  (Justin Michael Reed, 32:51)

• Genesis often features narratives in which the supposed outsiders—Canaanites, Egyptians, Philistines—receive surprising sympathy or behave more righteously than the Israelites, suggesting a nuanced, self-critical national narrative at odds with later blanket condemnations.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Problem of Justice:

  “It seems like Noah has missed the mark, he's overreacting. And people imagine in an earlier form of the text where—where those problems are fixed.”
  (Justin Michael Reed, 12:29)

• On Scholarly Blind Spots:

  “Ninety-something percent of interpreters ... start with what I call a presumption of Canaanite guilt.... But they don’t entertain the possibility that one could read the passage better in its literary context by starting with different presumptions.”
  (Justin Michael Reed, 13:04)

• On Literary Irony in Genesis:

  “Irony is a possibility. It could be that things go wrong, just like they immediately went wrong after the naming.”
  (Justin Michael Reed, 22:36)

• On Reading Genesis as Self-Critical Literature:

  “In Genesis 9, Canaan is the innocent victim of a curse, [which] contributes to reading this mixed depiction—this diversity of how the Israelites and the Canaanites are depicted...”
  (Justin Michael Reed, 31:26)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [02:14] - Reed discusses his research focus and personal journey into the question of Noah’s curse.
• [07:17] - Survey and critique of major scholarly interpretations, source criticism, and “presumption of Canaanite guilt.”
• [13:00] - Reed’s central critique: unexamined foundational biases in biblical scholarship.
• [19:31] - Outline of Reed’s intertextual, irony-focused reading and its literary and theological consequences.
• [25:56] - Detailed unpacking of Noah’s unjust action and its biblical-theological implications.
• [27:47] - How this story fits into the broader arc of Genesis and the Torah—mixed depictions of Canaanites and shifting divine-human relations.
• [34:34] - Closing remarks.

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Takeaways

• Reed’s The Injustice of Noah’s Curse challenges centuries-old readings and pushes scholars and readers to confront their own interpretive assumptions.
• Genesis 9 is not a tidy tale of just punishment but a complex narrative that exposes human failure and the limitations of human justice—even among the so-called righteous.
• The depiction of outsiders and scapegoats (Canaanites or others) in Genesis is neither uniform nor simplistic, inviting a reevaluation of what it means to read the Bible faithfully and critically in light of its reception history and ethical consequences.

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Transcript

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[Justin Michael Reed]

Welcome to the New Books Network.

[Michael Morales]

In Genesis 9, Noah plants a vineyard and eventually becomes drunk and uncovered in his tent. Then we are told that Ham sees the nakedness of his father, but when Noah wakes up, he curses Canaan, Ham's son. For more than 2,000 years, interpreters have struggled to make sense of this story, trying to fill its gaps and explain its ambiguities. Tune in as we speak with Justin Michael Reed, who offers a novel explanation in his recent book, the Injustice of Noah's Curse. You're listening to New Books Network, and I'm your host, Michael Morales. Justin Michael Reed is Associate professor of Old Testament Hebrew Bible at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Justin, welcome to New Books and Biblical Studies.

[Justin Michael Reed]

Thanks for having me on the podcast. I've enjoyed listening to and learning from these interviews for a long time.

[Michael Morales]

Tell us about yourself and how you came to write a book on Noah's curse in Genesis 9.

[Justin Michael Reed]

A little about myself well, I'll say that I am an associate professor of the Old Testament of the Hebrew Bible at Louisville Seminary, and my research and teaching interests include African American hermeneutics or African American criticism, the study of the history of consequences of biblical texts so how they're received, and also the impact that texts have had in real people's lives and issues that have to do with race and ethnicity as they relate to the Bible. Now this is a passage, this is a story where those interests naturally make Sense. So the story, it's a weird one. The story is one that has to do with Noah. People tend to be familiar with Noah from the ark, Noah, who's declared righteous by the narrator, Noah, whom God spares along with Noah's family. That's the story that people tend to remember as ending with the rainbow, the covenant, the rainbow. Happy ending. That's how you get it in most of the movies and the children's Bibles and those type of depictions. But in Genesis, that last episode of Noah's life is in Genesis 9. And it's after the rainbow that you get Noah's curse. So this story, we could say it starts with Noah planting a vineyard. Noah gets drunk. He drinks what you know, the vineyard produces. He gets drunk. And as is sometimes the case, Noah strips naked. And Noah passes out in his tent. Ham, one of Noah's sons, sees his father naked. And Noah's other two sons, Ham tells the other two sons, those other two sons don't look at. They don't see their dad naked. They go backwards and cover Noah up. Noah. The climax of the story is that Noah proclaims a curse of slavery. And that curse of slavery is one where Noah says, cursed be Canaan. Now, Canaan is neither the one that saw Noah Ham, nor is Canaan one of the brothers who covered Noah. Canaan actually didn't do anything in the story. He's been mentioned as Ham's son. So this is Noah's grandson, the son of Ham who saw Noah. So Noah has a curse against Canaan. And for a lot of reasons. It's a weird passage, but in terms of my interest, it's more than just it being a strange passage. It's a passage with big consequences. It's been weaponized. It's a passage where Noah has a curse of slavery. And that curse has been weaponized against people throughout history to justify mistreatment of oppression, of exploitation of Jews, Muslims, Catholics, religious heretics, European peasants, Native Americans, and more. Probably the most notorious weaponization of this text has been against black people. And in that type of weaponization, it's often described with the misnomer, the curse of Ham. So that's one that people listeners might already be familiar with having heard before. So all of this is to say this is a text with enormous consequences. It naturally fits with my research. And the story of how I got into it is interesting too. I was actually teaching at a church teaching Bible study Wednesday Bible study. We're going through the Book of Genesis in order to. And when we got to this text. I had come prepared with all the insights from biblical scholars who I admire. And I thought, oh yeah, this is going to make a weird passage make sense to everybody and for most people at work. But there was one deacon who pushed back and she just said, no, this isn't really convincing me. And she had her points that she brought up. And I was inspired by her resistance to these academic arguments. And I looked further into things that she mentioned, and I found more questions and issues as I kept looking. And I just kept seeing, as I went through more and more and more sources, I kept seeing patterns, similarities, and bigger hermeneutical issues, bigger issues with how we make meaning of the text. And this was fascinating to me. No one else was writing about it. And so it naturally developed into this book that I'm proud of. So, yeah, thanks for asking.

[Michael Morales]

Well, Genesis 9 is clearly a difficult passage filled with exegetical conundrums. Would you give us a few of the leading interpretations of Noah's curse, along with some of their weaknesses or deficiencies?

[Justin Michael Reed]

When it comes to what's difficult about the passage, I can reiterate what I said about the consequences of the passage. It's obviously difficult when a passage is being weaponized against you. But the difficulties also have to do with exegesis, with meaning making. And interpreters for the past several decades, I'd say since the 80s, pay some attention to both. Interpreters will, in a typical commentary and typical article, interpreters will say, hey, this text has been weaponized against black people. It does not justify slavery or some other form of oppression of black people. And that's good, that's good that that difficulty is tackled. Unfortunately, the text does still get weaponized. It's usually not weaponized in scholarship. It's usually actually outside of the mainstream of scholarship, but it still does get weaponized sometimes. And what's difficult of the passage also has to do with meaning, with what the text means. And that's not because there's strange words in the passage or something obscure, but it's because as a whole, it seems strange. It seems like it doesn't make sense. As I already mentioned, it's a text where the wrongdoing seems like. It's simply that Ham saw his father naked, didn't cover him up, and told his brothers, who didn't do those things they didn't see, they did cover, and they didn't talk about it to anybody. I guess. So people say, hey, it seems like Noah's overreacting. I don't. I don't know if any listeners can relate to accidentally seeing their parents naked, but I would think it's an overreaction if my dad were to respond with a curse of slavery. And then the direction of the curse, Noah curses Canaan. Canaan doesn't do anything in the story. So the two biggest difficulties people mention, and that's not just experts or scholars who know the intricate details. Anybody who reads this passage across more than 2,000 years, you'll get people bring up, hey, it seems like Noah has missed the mark. And it seems like the magnitude of this punishment is off the charts. So those are the two biggest. There's some other ones that I bring up in my book that get considerable treatment, like, why doesn't God show up in this text? How does this relate to the depiction of this story where Noah gets drunk, strips naked? Does this curse. How does that relate to the Noah who is declared righteous in Genesis 6 by the narrator? And questions like, what else? Oh, yeah, Noah. Before he does the curse, the narrator says, noah knew that which his youngest son did to him. And you say, well, but then the next sentence is Noah saying, curse be Canaan. Cain is not his youngest son. And Cain didn't do anything. Well, maybe it's about Ham, but Ham also is never described elsewhere as Noah's youngest son. In fact, Noah's three sons are listed repeatedly with Ham in the middle position. So it seems strange. So there's things about this passage that seem strange. One direction. I can tell you the different ways people deal with it. I guess I probably should start with the. No, I'll start with a couple ways. I'll start with a couple ways. And then to say something big picture. So one way people deal with it is to talk about source criticism, to go down the path of explaining that this passage was created gradually over time. And there's an earlier layer that's more coherent in terms of any of these details that seem strange. That earlier layer we don't have a physical copy of, but hypothetically, we can reconstruct it by simply making the details make more sense. So change it. So Kanan acted in the original version. Now it's been changed so that Ham is inserted and Kanan is not the actor in the original version there, Canaan was Noah's youngest son, et cetera. Just say there was an earlier version. Even scholars saying in an earlier version, Canaan did something more horrific than look at his dad. And that was edited and changed. So one direction is to hypothetically reconstruct an earlier version of the text where There is no issue in terms of these strange difficulties of the passage. Critically, I think it's important to point out that the issues we're talking about all have to do with justice. These are issues of what seems like an unjust curse. And that's me defining justice as a reaction that fits the wrongdoing. So it seems like Noah has missed the mark, he's overreacted. And people imagine in an earlier form the text where they're. Where those problems are fixed. And that leads me to comment on this being the big picture issue that shows up in different directions. So source criticism is one direction, but then there's also all kinds of interpretations of the details. Say, well, this phrase is an idiom that means something else. Or this ancient context is a frame of understanding, an issue that to you might not seem like a big deal, but to the ancient Israelites, it was the worst thing in the world to see your dad naked or something like that. Right? And once you understand those details, then the passage seems just. And what. I'm bringing up the biggest weakness. My book is full of looking into the specific strengths and weaknesses of each of these arguments and hundreds of interpretations. But the biggest issue is an overall presumption that they share 90 something percent of interpreters who come at this passage. And I'd say it's close to like 97, 98% of interpreters. Interpretations that I've found across 2,000 years start with what I call a presumption of Canaanite guilt. Now, Canaanite, I can replace that with a different word. But the point is, this presumption of guilt is one where the interpreter says, huh, this looks like a strange passage. I'm. I'm wise, I'm smart, I'm clever. I'm going to use my wisdom, my intelligence, my cleverness to figure out why the passage. I'm sorry, why the curse is not as unjust as it looks where originally it wasn't as unjust as it looks now. So there's something that you're missing, but I'm going to clarify that so that you can see that this is a just curse. And my argument is not just that there's specific things wrong with this or that, another interpretation, and that I can give you a better detail to make sense of it. But my argument is that overall this is a presumption that is not being interrogated. It's not being questioned, it's not being critiqued, it's not being defended. People are just starting with this presumption. And when they start with that presumption, it leads them down certain paths of interpretation, but they don't entertain the possibility that one could read the passage better in its literary context by starting with different presumptions. And so that's what I'm doing in my book. That's my biggest critique. And you know, I don't. Of course I don't mind if people. I do mind, but it's okay if people disagree with my interpretations about this passage. But I think that any interpreter should have to justify the presumptions that they're starting with and what ends up happening. What I've shown with many examples in the book, is that interpreters, starting with this presumption of Canaanite guilt, they end up making interpretations of the passage that don't fit well with their own overall interpretation of Genesis 1:11, with their own theology and their own literary approach to the passage. And so I argue that if they could abandon this presumption of Canaanite guilt, then they'd have more coherence in their own exegesis, in their own projects. So it's not just that they have to have my overall interpretation of the passage in all its details, or that they need to believe that some specific detail I'm bringing up is really important. But overall, in their own context, they could benefit from bringing some scrutiny to that starting presumption and considering whether it should be overturned for the. For the meaning making that they're doing in their own context. Rehearse I get so many headaches every month.

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[Michael Morales]

First. Now, your understanding of Genesis 9, which is quite novel.

[Justin Michael Reed]

So my own understanding of Genesis 9 has presumptions just like other people have presumptions. I don't think you can read without presumptions, but I'm not using the presumption of Canaanite guilt. I'm going to be brief and not actually get into the depth of these two presumptions that I think address the same reasons that scholars have adopted the presumption of Canaanite guilt. So I have my own ways of addressing those same things, but I'll briefly say that they have to do with something from critical race theory and something from speech act theory. The other presumptions that come into my reading have to do with the fact that I'm reading Genesis 9 intertextually, that is in dialogue with and informed by other texts. I'm Reading it intertextually with what comes in its literary context, especially what comes before it. In what comes before it. In Genesis 3, Genesis 5, Genesis 6, Genesis 8. Key passages inform how I read Genesis 9. And so what happens is Genesis 5:29 is when Noah's born. Lamech describes Noah's birth in a way that evokes what happened in the garden. God's punishment of Eve and Adam included this key word that is repeated when Lamech is naming Noah. And Lamech hopes that Noah will, the English translations often say toil for this word. Lamech hopes that Noah will relieve people from. Give people comfort from their toil because of the ground that Yah, the Lord God cursed. And so there's Hope in Genesis 5:29 that Noah will be like Adam and Eve, or like Adam and fix that. And then, as I keep reading in Genesis 6, 5, 6, God describes the rationale for the curse. But that rationale actually takes a key word from Lamech naming Noah. That keyword is Hebrew root naham, which is, according to Lamech, is related to the name for Noah, Noach. And Lamech says, I'm naming him Noach because he will give us comfort. And he's using that root, Nacham. But then that root shows up in Genesis 6, where God says, because I regret. I regret, Nihampti, that I created humanity. I'm going to destroy all life with this flood. And so now, not only did we get hope in the relation between Noah being named and how he'll hopefully fix what happened in Eden, but now we get irony, because as soon as this naming happens, we get God saying, using the exact same word that Lamech says is the reason for Noah's name, and God saying, and now I'm going to destroy all humanity. It's not relief, it's not comfort, it's destruction. Because that root can mean comfort or regret. It has that range of meanings. And that's significant because etymologically, the biblical authors could have written that Noah is named for the root nun vav ch, I mean het, which means to give rest. After all, that root was used about Adam in the garden, but instead they used this one. That could be a pun. It could be ironically used in Genesis 6, 5 and 6. And so with that irony, now I'm primed. I have a presumption that guides my reading. And that priming or that presumption is that, one, I should be hoping for Noah to fix things. But two, irony is a possibility. It could be that things go wrong, just like they immediately went wrong after the naming. And so as I keep reading, the flood happens. It's great that Noah was righteous. It's great that Noah is part of a remnant that is saved. It's great that life is able to start back over, that God gives a blessing to Noah, that Noah's family is told to be fruitful and multiply repeatedly. Which sounds very, very good and very positive. Like that phrase was used in Genesis 1:2 at the same time. Genesis 8:21 describes humanity with extremely similar language to what happened before the flood. Before the flood, the imaginations or the desires of human hearts are described as wicked. And after the flood, they're described as wicked again. And you say, well, who is this about after the flood? Because the only people left are Noah and his family. And in my mind, as I read, I'm saying, well, I. I hope it's not about Noah. Noah is the one that was declared righteous. Could it be about Noah? And so when I get to Genesis 9, 18, 29, this passage about Noah, what I see is connections between Noah and Adam and Eve that are negative. And those connections get me to see that Noah is having a type of fall. I'm putting scare quotes up fall experience, like Adam and Eve. And those connections are intentional. And the culmination of that fall experience is an unjust curse. And so you see some connections. I'm just going to briefly say in things like the fact that Noah is immediately described in Genesis 9:20 as ish, ha, Adam, the man of the ground, which, I'm sorry, each ha Adama and Adamah the ground. Ha Adama. The ground is what? Adam is created from the ground. He is literally the man of the ground. And Cain's actually described in relation to the ground. So you see immediate connection between Noah and Adam. You see that Noah plants a vineyard, like God had planted a vineyard, that Noah drinks from the fruit of the vine, like Adam and Eve had taken the fruit. There's this problem of nakedness. Noah strips naked and loses consciousness. Adam and Eve were naked after eating the fruit, they gained consciousness of their nakedness and cover themselves. So you see these connections, and you see that Noah's vineyard, Noah getting drunk, is another Garden of Eden sort of fall story. And the climax of this story is where you would expect God to show up like God showed up in Eden. God showed up to punish Cain. In this case, God doesn't show up. And Noah steps in. And when Noah steps in, I read Noah's reaction intertextually in conversation with God's reactions where God was Very meticulous, precise and accurate in punishing the snake. Eve, Adam, Cain. And Noah's punishment doesn't match that justice at all. There's no explanation for why he's punishing Canaan. And it's. It doesn't fit the crime or the wrongdoing, whatever you want to call it. And so the injustice of Noah's curse is actually the climax to this depiction of Noah having a failure similar to Adam and Eve's. And so in its context, this is a reading that also explains what comes Next in Genesis 11, the next time that there's an issue where God could step in. God does, because the last time that God didn't, things went wrong because Noah was in charge.

[Michael Morales]

How would you say this reading coheres with the rest of Genesis? Or what is its narrative function in Genesis?

[Justin Michael Reed]

There's a couple of things I could say here. One is to say that this text where God doesn't show up and Noah does, is part of a way that God interacts in Genesis as we progressively go through the story. God doesn't react with the same. Doesn't show up in the same ways that God did in Genesis 1:11 as you continue from Genesis 12:50. And the fact that these different strategies didn't quite get things right is the reason why God will relate to Abraham and his descendants differently after Genesis 1:11. And so my interpretation, I think fits with a lot of other scholars assertions that things change after Genesis 11 with God's relation to people. And in my interpretation, Noah not adjudicating things correctly is a reason for God's continual involvement to try to get things right. Another thing that I could talk about is the Canaanites, the Canaanites in Genesis, there's a way that the Canaanites and other descendants of Ham show up in Genesis that's different than the way that they're treated. And I'll say specifically about the Canaanites for now in the rest of the Torah. So in Deuteronomy 7, Deuteronomy 20, you have very negative language about the Canaanites as needing to be exterminated, that God commands a genocide against the Canaanites. Similarly in Exodus 23, their destruction is necessary. In Leviticus 18, you have them characterized as sexually depraved. And that justifies their expulsion the land vomiting them up. And all of this gives the impression, and I think it's the right impression, that the biblical authors responsible for these texts in different traditions, Deuteronomistic, priestly, non priestly, the biblical authors had this strong antipathy, this strong aversion to how the Canaanites are in their depiction of them, whether that's historical or not is beside the point. That's how they treat the Canaanites that they construct in this literature. So the question becomes, how should we read passages that seem to portray the Canaanites more positively than that dominant negative view? Genesis has a lot of those passages. You have Canaanites who are covenant partners with Abraham and Isaac. You have Melchizedek, Melchizedek who is a Canaanite and a priest of the same God that Abraham worships. You have Tamar, who's presumably a Canaanite and Judah says she's more righteous than I. And you have these other examples, Canaanites that aren't depraved, the worst depicted in the worst way. And some of those stereotypes you have, the stereotypes in Leviticus 18 that interpreters say that's typical of Canaanites. Well, you actually have those stereotypes depicted of. I mean, those sexual indiscretions. In Leviticus 18, you have those depicted of the proto Israelites, the ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Jacob's children. There you have people who are marrying or having sex with Those who Leviticus 18 says, you're not supposed to do that because that's what Canaanites do. So how are we supposed to read these mixed depictions where Canaanites can be depicted positively sometimes, or extremely negative, and these depictions where the Israelites can be depicted as the wrongdoers, as the ones who actually fit the stereotypes that they're projecting on others. So my interpretation, where In Genesis 9, Canaan is the innocent victim of a curse, contributes to reading this mixed depiction. This diversity of how the Israelites and the Canaanites are depicted as related to the interests of biblical authors that are different and how they relate their different interests. Reading this overall in Genesis, my way, my way of reading this and how it fits with all of Genesis is part of an argument that the biblical authors are capable of portraying the Canaanites who they hate or portraying them compassionately when it is in the biblical author's own interest, because they have another priority that's more important. In this case, the priority is to depict Noah negatively with this curse as the climax of that negative depiction, as a way to show that Lamech's hope didn't come true and the story needs to progress. And what I'm arguing about, this text can be a valid way to understand these other texts, like the wife sister stories, where Egyptian or Philistine or Canaanites Genesis 12, 20 and 26 are all depicted as where Abraham or Isaac has a stereotype and the stereotypes wrong stereotypes untrue. Those others aren't sexually depraved and murderous trying to steal your wife. In fact the Abraham and Isaac are the ones who are lying or cheating, deceptive and deserve the critique. And so the point is that in those texts in Genesis 9 the biblical authors are able to critique their own quote unquote good guy based on the ad hoc compassionate depiction of the Canaanites as innocent victims. And so this is part of how reading Genesis as a whole has more flexibility in how they're depicting quote the in groups, the in group and the out groups differently from how many biblical scholars have seen it.

[Michael Morales]

Justin, thank you so much for joining us on New Books and Biblical Studies.

[Justin Michael Reed]

Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure.

[Michael Morales]

Friends, thank you for joining us on New Books Network. Until next time, welcome to the New Books Network.