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Lord my God of Shem; and let Canaan be his slave. May God<br />
make space for Japheth, and let him live in the tents of Shem; and<br />
let Canaan be his slave.”<br />
What starts off a story of a family, spirals to cover nations and the<br />
identity or origins of all people: “from these the whole earth was<br />
peopled.” The story makes no pretence about giving equal power<br />
to all members of the earth, who all originate from Noah, the<br />
survivor of the flood. Rather, the story openly legitimates the<br />
oppression of one nation by the other. Ham is named as the father<br />
of Canaan and cursed to be a slave of Shem. The descendants of<br />
Ham are further identified as ‘Cush, Egypt and, Put and Canaan,”<br />
10:6. The descendants of Shem are outlined in Gen. 11:10-26,<br />
which ends by saying he became the Father of Abram (Abraham),<br />
the husband of Sarah.<br />
What ideology is propounded here? As Bailey’s article notes “Israel<br />
is totally to be identified with Shem, the one who took the lead in<br />
covering up Noah, the one whom Canaan is to be a slave, the one<br />
whose God YHWH is to be blessed” (p.137). Not only does this<br />
story legitimate the dispossession, annihilation and sub-ordination<br />
of Canaanites in the biblical text, when the Israelites were promised<br />
and given their land by God, it was also used in the apartheid<br />
regime to legitimize the oppression of black people by white South<br />
Africans.<br />
Lot and his two Daughters<br />
The story of Lot and his daughters is found in Gen. 12-19 and it is<br />
closely linked with Abraham’s story. When God first called Abraham<br />
to leave his country and to go to a land that will be shown to him,<br />
(12:10), he took with him his bother’s son, Lot. They became<br />
wondering pastoralists together until they parted ways. This<br />
brought Lot to Sodom and Gomorrah, where the Lord ordered him<br />
to leave these two cities as they would be destroyed. On the night<br />
of the destruction, Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of salt, while<br />
Lot fled to Zoar with his two daughters. The story continues to say:<br />
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