Lot’s Daughters: An Inner-Biblical Exegesis of Ham’s Violation of Noah

Isolated in a mountain cave after the destruction of Sodom, Lot’s daughters carry out a plan to obtain children by having sex with their drunken father.

^{בראשית יט:לב} לְכָה נַשְׁקֶה אֶת אָבִינוּ יַיִן וְנִשְׁכְּבָה עִמּוֹ וּנְחַיֶּה מֵאָבִינוּ זָרַע.

^{Gen 19:32} Come, let us make our father drink wine, and let us lie with him, that we may maintain life through our father.”^[1]

A reader’s first question when confronted with this shocking scene would probably not be: “Where did they get the wine?” Rabbinic commentators, however, were troubled by this incongruous detail and supplied an explanation:

^{בראשית רבה נא:ח} אֶלָּא מִמַּה שֶׁהַיַּיִן מְרֻבֶּה לָהֶם הָיוּ מַחְבִּיאִין אוֹתוֹ בַּמְּעָרוֹת.

^{Gen. Rab. 51:8} They [the people of Sodom] possessed an overabundance of wine, which they hid in caves!^[2]

My question is less literal, and more literary. Not: Where did Lot’s daughters physically obtain the wine they used to incapacitate and assault their father? Rather: Where did this terrible wine-and-violation story come from? The answer lies in inner-biblical exegesis. Lot’s daughters have wine because their story presupposes another biblical text—Noah’s drunken nakedness after the Flood (Gen 9:20–29)—which it interprets and rewrites.

Sexual Euphemisms and Double Entendre in Drunken Noah

Biblical Hebrew possesses a rich repertoire of euphemistic expressions for sexuality and human genitalia, and the brief account of Noah’s drunkenness contains an unusually dense cluster of them.

1. A Vineyard

^{בראשית ט:כ} וַיָּחֶל נֹחַ אִישׁ הָאֲדָמָה וַיִּטַּע כָּרֶם.

^{Gen 9:20} Noah, the tiller of the soil, was the first to plant a vineyard.

In a straightforward reading, Noah simply planted a כרם, “vineyard.” However, כרם is also used euphemistically in the Bible. For example, the female speaker at the beginning of Song of Songs refers to her own body and sexuality, perhaps more specifically to her sexual organs, as her “vineyard”:^[3]

^{שיר השירים א:ו} אַל תִּרְאוּנִי שֶׁאֲנִי שְׁחַרְחֹרֶת שֶׁשְּׁזָפַתְנִי הַשָּׁמֶשׁ בְּנֵי אִמִּי נִחֲרוּ בִי שָׂמֻנִי נֹטֵרָה אֶת הַכְּרָמִים כַּרְמִי שֶׁלִּי לֹא נָטָרְתִּי.

^{Song 1:6} Don’t stare at me because I am swarthy, because the sun has gazed upon me. My mother’s sons quarreled with me, they made me guard the vineyards; my own vineyard I did not guard.

She did not protect her chastity, and for this reason her brothers made her keeper of the vineyards. These passages depend upon a double meaning in which vineyard denotes both a literal plot of land and the female body with its sexual and reproductive potential.

Later in Song of Songs, כַּרְמִי שֶׁלִּי, “my own vineyard,” similarly refers to the woman with whom the speaker has an intimate relationship, in contrast to the multitude of women represented by Solomon’s “vineyards”:^[4]

^{שיר השירים ח:יב} כַּרְמִי שֶׁלִּי לְפָנָי הָאֶלֶף לְךָ שְׁלֹמֹה וּמָאתַיִם לְנֹטְרִים אֶת פִּרְיוֹ.

^{Song 8:12} I have my very own vineyard: You may have the thousand, O Solomon, and the guards of the fruit two hundred!

Like the English expression “fruit of the womb,” the biblical image of the fruitful vineyard links female sexuality, fertility, and offspring to cultivation and harvest. That connection remained intelligible well beyond the biblical period. In a homily, the Jerusalem Talmud (citing Job 24:11) describes the refusal of the antediluvian generation to create progeny as refusal to enter the vineyard:^[5]

^{ירושלמי יבמות ו:ה} אָמַר רִבִּי יוּדָה בֶּן פָּזִי. כְּתִיב בֵּין שׁוּרוֹתָם יַצְהִירוּ וְלֹא יִפְנֶה דֶּרֶךְ כְּרָמִים. שֶׁלֹּא הָיְתָה בְּעִילָתָן לְשׁוּם בָּנִים.

^{j. Yebam. 6:5} Rebbi Jehudah ben Pazi said, it is written: “Between their rows they make oil, they do not turn to the way of vineyards” (Job 24:11), that their copulation was not for children.

Against this backdrop, the notice that Noah “planted a vineyard” may have suggested more to ancient hearers than the establishment of an agricultural enterprise, inviting the possibility of a sexual or reproductive subtext that later interpreters would develop explicitly.

2. A Tent

^{בראשית ט:כא} וַיֵּשְׁתְּ מִן הַיַּיִן וַיִּשְׁכָּר וַיִּתְגַּל בְּתוֹךְ אׇהֳלֹה.

^{Gen 9:21} He drank of the wine and became drunk, and he uncovered himself within his tent.

Another Hebrew euphemism for female anatomy and sexuality is אהל, “tent,” which conceptualizes female bodies as owned living spaces, and appears in both positive and negative contexts.^[6] A vulgar example occurs in Ezekiel’s extended metaphor personifying Samaria and Jerusalem—named אָהֳלָה (Oholah), “her tent,” and אָהֳלִיבָה (Oholibah), “my tent is in her,” respectively—as adulterous sisters married to YHWH (ch. 23).

The euphemism occasionally surfaces through comedic wordplay. For example, when Jacob decides to return home to his father’s people, his father-in-law, Laban, follows after, looking to retrieve the household gods that Rachel had stolen. During his search of Jacob’s camp, Laban repeatedly enters and exits the “tents” of Jacob’s wives:

^{בראשית לא:לג} וַיָּבֹא לָבָן בְּאֹהֶל יַעֲקֹב וּבְאֹהֶל לֵאָה וּבְאֹהֶל שְׁתֵּי הָאֲמָהֹת וְלֹא מָצָא וַיֵּצֵא מֵאֹהֶל לֵאָה וַיָּבֹא בְּאֹהֶל רָחֵל. ^לא:לד וְרָחֵל לָקְחָה אֶת הַתְּרָפִים וַתְּשִׂמֵם בְּכַר הַגָּמָל וַתֵּשֶׁב עֲלֵיהֶם וַיְמַשֵּׁשׁ לָבָן אֶת כׇּל הָאֹהֶל וְלֹא מָצָא.

^{Gen 31:33} So Laban went into Jacob’s tent and Leah’s tent and the tents of the two maidservants; but he did not find them. Leaving Leah’s tent, he entered Rachel’s tent. ^31:34 Rachel, meanwhile, had taken the idols and placed them in the camel cushion and sat on them; and Laban rummaged through the tent without finding them.

The repetition culminates in Rachel’s declaration that she cannot rise כִּי דֶרֶךְ נָשִׁים לִי, “because the way of women is upon me,” transforming an otherwise mundane search into a scene laden with sexual and menstrual innuendo:

^{בראשית לא:לה} וַתֹּאמֶר אֶל אָבִיהָ אַל יִחַר בְּעֵינֵי אֲדֹנִי כִּי לוֹא אוּכַל לָקוּם מִפָּנֶיךָ כִּי דֶרֶךְ נָשִׁים לִי וַיְחַפֵּשׂ וְלֹא מָצָא אֶת הַתְּרָפִים.

^{Gen 31:35} For she said to her father, “Let not my lord take it amiss that I cannot rise before you, for the way of women is upon me.” Thus he searched, but could not find the household idols.

Judges also plays on the euphemistic use of tents, when Jael, celebrated as מִנָּשִׁים בָּאֹהֶל תְּבֹרָךְ, “most blessed among tent-women” (v. 24), kills Sisera with a tent peg in her own tent.^[7]

Although the story of Noah’s drunkenness seems to present Noah drinking alone, the verse reports that he uncovered himself בתוך אהלה. The final ה on אהל may preserve an archaic spelling of the third masculine singular possessive pronoun—i.e., betokh ʾoholoh, “in his tent”—but it was read by Genesis Rabbah in the more expected fashion, as the third feminine singular pronoun: betokh ʾoholah, “in her tent”:

^{בראשית רבה לו:ד} בְּתוֹךְ אָהֳלֹה, אָהֳלָה כְּתִיב, בְּתוֹךְ אָהֳלָהּ שֶׁל אִשְׁתּוֹ.

^{Gen. Rab. 36:4} In his tent is written “in her tent”—in the tent of his wife.

This interpretation places Noah’s wife at the scene and reflects an awareness that the language of tents here could evoke more than architecture.

3. Seeing the Nakedness

^{בראשית ט:כב} וַיַּרְא חָם אֲבִי כְנַעַן אֵת עֶרְוַת אָבִיו וַיַּגֵּד לִשְׁנֵי אֶחָיו בַּחוּץ.

^{Gen 9:22} Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father’s nakedness and told his two brothers outside.

The phrase “see the nakedness” as a euphemism for illicit sexual activity is especially clear in the incest laws in Leviticus:

^{ויקרא כ:יז} וְאִישׁ אֲשֶׁר יִקַּח אֶת אֲחֹתוֹ בַּת אָבִיו אוֹ בַת אִמּוֹ וְרָאָה אֶת עֶרְוָתָהּ וְהִיא תִרְאֶה אֶת עֶרְוָתוֹ חֶסֶד הוּא וְנִכְרְתוּ לְעֵינֵי בְּנֵי עַמָּם עֶרְוַת אֲחֹתוֹ גִּלָּה עֲוֺנוֹ יִשָּׂא.

^{Lev 20:17} If a man marries his sister, the daughter of either his father or his mother, so that he sees her nakedness and she sees his nakedness, it is a disgrace; they shall be excommunicated in the sight of their kinsfolk. He has uncovered the nakedness of his sister, he shall bear his guilt.^[8]

Individually, neither vineyard nor tent requires a sexual interpretation. In Noah’s story, however, these terms appear alongside the equally suggestive language of nakedness and exposure, creating a cluster of sexual and reproductive imagery.

The end of the story as we have it, however, remains unclear. We read that Ham saw his father’s nakedness וַיַּגֵּד לִשְׁנֵי אֶחָיו, “and told his two brothers” (v. 22), but what did he tell them? What did he want his brothers to do?

Taken together, the euphemisms may suggest a sexual scenario involving Noah’s wife. Leviticus explicitly describes maternal incest as uncovering the father’s nakedness:

^{ויקרא כ:יא} וְאִישׁ אֲשֶׁר יִשְׁכַּב אֶת־אֵשֶׁת אָבִיו עֶרְוַת אָבִיו גִּלָּה....

^{Lev 20:11a} If a man lies with his father’s wife, it is the nakedness of his father that he has uncovered.^[9]

If the sexual implications of the language in Genesis 9 are pressed, then, the transgression may originally have involved a violation of Noah’s wife rather than Noah.^[10]

The Rabbis, on the other hand, saw Ham’s action as sexual transgression against Noah:

^{בבלי סנהדרין ע.} רב ושמואל, חד אמר: סרסו, וחד אמר: רבעו.

^{b. Sanh 70a} Rav and Samuel: One said “He castrated him,” the other said, “He took advantage of him sexually.”^[11]

Whatever precise act lies behind the story’s obscure language, its basic narrative function is clearer; it completes a sequence of family-conflict stories in the Primeval History:

• Conflict between husband and wife in the story of Adam and Eve (Gen 3);
• Between brothers in Cain and Abel (4:1–16);
• Between father and son in Noah’s family (9:20–29).

Here the conflict divides Noah’s sons. One son transgresses against his father and attempts to enlist his brothers, while the others refuse to participate and instead protect him.

^{בראשית ט:כג} וַיִּקַּח שֵׁם וָיֶפֶת אֶת הַשִּׂמְלָה וַיָּשִׂימוּ עַל שְׁכֶם שְׁנֵיהֶם וַיֵּלְכוּ אֲחֹרַנִּית וַיְכַסּוּ אֵת עֶרְוַת אֲבִיהֶם וּפְנֵיהֶם אֲחֹרַנִּית וְעֶרְוַת אֲבִיהֶם לֹא רָאוּ.

^{Gen 9:23} But Shem and Japheth took a cloth, placed it against both their backs and, walking backward, they covered their father’s nakedness; their faces were turned the other way, so that they did not see their father’s nakedness.

The story thus contrasts filial disloyalty with filial loyalty, without requiring us to resolve precisely what Ham originally “did.”

The author of the Sodom narrative also appears to have understood Ham’s transgression as a sexual violation of his father (or perhaps of his mother),^[12] transforming the narrative’s suggestive ambiguities into an explicit sexual encounter between Lot and his daughters.

Sodom Parallels the Flood

The shared plot structure and vocabulary of the Flood (Gen 6–9) and Sodom (Gen 19) narratives suggest that the latter was modeled on the former.^[13] Both narratives contrast a single righteous hero—Noah or Lot—against a corrupt community. When God takes notice of the situation, he warns the hero of the impending destruction. The hero then prepares for what is coming, and he and his family are saved when the destruction takes place. The parallel structure becomes especially striking in the closing scene, when the hero withdraws into an isolated setting, becomes drunk, and his children take advantage of his inebriated state.

Both narratives emphasize the need to procreate in the aftermath of the destruction. In Noah’s story, God blesses Noah and his sons and bids them: פְּרוּ וּרְבוּ, “be fertile and increase!” In Lot’s story, the composer incorporates the need into the closing scene, as the motivation for his children’s actions.

Lot’s Eldest Daughter Coerces Her Sister

Lot’s elder daughter devises and initiates the plan and coerces her younger sister into it. She begins by emphasizing the desperation of their situation:

^{בראשית יט:לא} וַתֹּאמֶר הַבְּכִירָה אֶל הַצְּעִירָה אָבִינוּ זָקֵן וְאִישׁ אֵין בָּאָרֶץ לָבוֹא עָלֵינוּ כְּדֶרֶךְ כׇּל הָאָרֶץ.

^{Gen 19:31} And the older one said to the younger, “Our father is old, and there is not a man on earth to come into us in the way of all the world.”

She then proposes a solution:

^{בראשית יט:לב} לְכָה נַשְׁקֶה אֶת אָבִינוּ יַיִן וְנִשְׁכְּבָה עִמּוֹ וּנְחַיֶּה מֵאָבִינוּ זָרַע.

^{Gen 19:32} “Come, let us make our father drink wine, and let us lie with him, that we may maintain life through our father.”

She immediately carries out the plan herself:

^{בראשית יט:לג} וַתַּשְׁקֶיןָ אֶת אֲבִיהֶן יַיִן בַּלַּיְלָה הוּא וַתָּבֹא הַבְּכִירָה וַתִּשְׁכַּב אֶת אָבִיהָ וְלֹא יָדַע בְּשִׁכְבָהּ וּבְקוּׄמָהּ.

^{Gen 19:33} That night they made their father drink wine, and the older one went in and lay with her father; he did not know when she lay down or when she rose.

In contrast to Noah, who וַיֵּדַע אֵת אֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה לוֹ בְּנוֹ הַקָּטָן, “knew what his youngest son had done to him” (Gen 9:24), Lot does not know of his eldest daughter’s actions.

The following morning, her appeal to her younger sister shifts. Whereas her initial proposal repeatedly referred toאבינו , “our father,” she now initially speaks ofאבי , “my father,” drawing attention to her own actions before urging her sister to imitate her example:

^{בראשית יט:לד} וַיְהִי מִמׇּחֳרָת וַתֹּאמֶר הַבְּכִירָה אֶל הַצְּעִירָה הֵן שָׁכַבְתִּי אֶמֶשׁ אֶת אָבִי נַשְׁקֶנּוּ יַיִן גַּם הַלַּיְלָה וּבֹאִי שִׁכְבִי עִמּוֹ וּנְחַיֶּה מֵאָבִינוּ זָרַע.

^{Gen 19:34} The next day the older one said to the younger, “See, last night I lay with my father; let us make him drink wine tonight also, and you go and lie with him, that we may maintain life through our father.”

Although the narrator uses וַתִּשְׁכַּב, “and she lay,” for both sisters, the surrounding language is more restrained in the account of the younger sister. When recounting the elder sister’s actions, the text reports that וַתָּבֹא הַבְּכִירָה וַתִּשְׁכַּב אֶת אָבִיהָ, “the firstborn went in (בוא, a verb frequently employed in sexual contexts) and lay with her father” (v. 33). Of the younger sister, however, the narrator uses a different verb, קום, “to arise,” and simply says that she lay עִמּוֹ, “with him”:

^{בראשית יט:לה} וַתַּשְׁקֶיןָ גַּם בַּלַּיְלָה הַהוּא אֶת אֲבִיהֶן יָיִן וַתָּקׇם הַצְּעִירָה וַתִּשְׁכַּב עִמּוֹ וְלֹא יָדַע בְּשִׁכְבָהּ וּבְקֻמָהּ.

^{Gen 19:35} That night also they made their father drink wine, and the younger one rose and lay with him; he did not know when she lay down or when she rose.

These differences heighten, by contrast, the transgressive character of the elder sister’s behavior. The elder sister thus emerges as the primary instigator of the scheme, both initiating it and enlisting her sister’s participation.

Reading Noah and Lot Together

In recreating the scene of Noah’s drunkenness in the story of Lot, the later biblical author reveals his interpretation of Noah, amplifying the sexually suggestive account of Noah’s drunken nakedness into an explicitly incestuous episode.^[14] Read together, the plan initiated by Lot’s elder daughter invites the reader to understand Ham’s purpose as also to enlist his brothers’ participation in violating their father (or his wife).

Unlike Lot’s younger daughter, however, who does not resist her sister’s coercion, Shem and Japheth avert their eyes. In addition, וַיְכַסּוּ אֵת עֶרְוַת אֲבִיהֶם, “they covered their father’s nakedness” (9:23). This departure from the Noah narrative darkens the portrait of Lot and his family.

In Noah’s family, the transgressive son fails to enlist his brothers. In Lot’s family, by contrast, the elder daughter succeeds. The younger sister follows her example, and both daughters participate in their father’s violation, which, unlike Noah (9:24), Lot never discovers (19:33, 35). The rewriting thus transforms a family divided between filial disloyalty and loyalty into one in which the entire younger generation is implicated.

Procreating after the Flood

The emphasis of the Lot narrative on obtaining offspring after catastrophe also draws attention to the reproductive context of Noah’s drunkenness. At the outset of the Flood, we find a careful distinction between male and female occupants of the ark, as Noah, his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives are listed as separate groups (Gen 6:18, 7:7), but after the flood, they are reunited as couples (8:16).

The Talmud understood this change as indicating a rule of sexual abstinence aboard the ark. Thus, the Talmud states:

^{בבלי סנהדרין קח:} וּמְנָלַן דְּנֶאֶסְרוּ? דִּכְתִיב: ״וּבָאתָ אֶל הַתֵּבָה אַתָּה וּבָנֶיךָ וְאִשְׁתְּךָ וּנְשֵׁי בָנֶיךָ אִתָּךְ״, וּכְתִיב: ״צֵא מִן הַתֵּבָה אַתָּה וְאִשְׁתְּךָ וּבָנֶיךָ וּנְשֵׁי בָנֶיךָ אִתָּךְ״. וְאָמַר רַבִּי יוֹחָנָן: מִיכָּן (אָמְרוּ) שֶׁנֶּאֶסְרוּ בְּתַשְׁמִישׁ הַמִּטָּה.

^{b. Sanh. 108b} And from where do we [know] that it [intercourse while in the ark] was prohibited? It is written: “And you shall enter the ark, with your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives” (Gen 6:18); and it is written: “Come out of the ark, together with your wife, your sons and your sons’ wives” (Gen 8:16). And Rabbi Yoḥanan says: From here, they [the Sages] said that it was prohibited to engage in intercourse.^[15]

The reunion of husbands and wives upon disembarkation (Gen 8:16) marked the restoration of sexual relations, immediately followed by the command: פְּרוּ וּרְבוּ, “be fertile and increase!” The Lot narrative makes explicit what is only contextual in Noah: after the destruction of a world, the restoration of human life requires the survivors to reproduce.

Appendix

A Flood Story with Many Layers

The Flood narrative is one of biblical scholarship’s most famous examples of compositional layering: a beloved story that dissolves, under analysis, into distinct narrative strands. Beyond the division into the Priestly and non-Priestly sources,^[16] the non-Priestly material itself contains internal strata, including a Primeval History in which Noah appears simply as the culminating patriarch and the first maker of wine.^[17]

A later compositional layer used this non-P Primeval History as a building block, creating a heroic patriarchal narrative stretching from Adam to Abraham. It is in these later additions that Noah becomes the Flood Hero,^[18] and the destruction stories of Noah and the Flood and Lot and the Fiery Destruction of Sodom are described in deliberate parallel. The story of Noah’s drunkenness serves both as the insertion point for the non-P Flood story into the non-P Primeval History and as a text that performs distinct literary functions in each context.

Within the non-P Primeval History, the episode functions as the culminating family-conflict narrative and remains embedded within the larger thematic concern of humanity’s relationship to the cultivated ground (אֲדָמָה).^[19] Within new non-P Flood layer, on the other hand, the accounts of Noah and Lot together support the composer’s construction of an esteemed Abrahamic portrait.

By transforming the ambiguities of Noah’s drunkenness into an increasingly explicit and degraded retelling, the narrative adds to Lot’s wretchedness. Noah’s family is fractured by the actions of one disloyal son; Lot’s family emerges from Sodom with both daughters implicated in incest with their father. The reuse of Noah’s story therefore contributes to the larger narrative construction of Lot as a foil for Abraham.^[20]