For because he considered neither the past grace of his begetting, nor the present reverence due his father, nor the future punishment of the injury done to his father, he was truly drunk, and what he thought he saw he did not see. There was in him a profound blindness, in that he could not see his father. For if he had seen his father, he would assuredly not have laughed; for a father is not to be laughed at, but to be reverenced. But far more was the foolish man unable to see the mind of the righteous. For how could he see, who supposed there to be in him the error of drunkenness, where there was the perfected exhalation of wisdom and of the other virtues? As it is written: 'For it is the breath of the power of God.'
For when is the mind more sober than then, when it so contemplates the nature of all things and the affairs of times present and to come, that no temporal tottering of drunkenness appears in it? I ask also for what reason, when before it had set Ham in the middle among the sons, it now makes him the younger. For thus it is written: 'Noah knew all that his younger son had done to him.' Did Scripture before lie in the order of the generation? Surely not. What then? Are contrary things now written? I think not. How then is it resolved, unless you take 'younger' not by age, not by time, but as rude in understanding and set in a certain infancy of intellect — one who has not drawn in the teaching of a more advanced age nor grasped the counsel of the aged?
For there are certain grey hairs of men's understanding. And therefore it says: 'When you come to the council of elders, close your mouth,' as another saying has it elsewhere: 'For you must learn before you speak.' Have your ears ready, therefore, that you may gain something from the counsels of the wise. The tongue is to be restrained, the hearing to be prepared. Blessing his son Shem, Noah said: 'Blessed be the Lord God of Shem, and let Canaan be his servant.' He called him both Lord and God, and especially the God of his son, whose name is Shem, because he is the God of the righteous — that is, the God of minds, not of valleys — who possess the grace of exalted virtue. Then, for what reason, when his son Ham had sinned, did he consign not him, but his son, to servitude?
And perhaps for this reason: that a father is more affected by the injuries of his son, especially those of which he himself stands as the guilty party and author, and is more vehemently grieved that the condemnation of his own sin has been paid by a son who was punished not so much by his own desert as by his father's; and then, because, since the son was a disciple of his father's teaching and an emulator of the worst thoughts, both used one body and the same mind and the same malice. Indifferently, therefore, the son pays the price either of his father's malice or of his own, since there is a common partnership in wickedness. What therefore he pays for his father's wickedness he doubtless also pays for his own, being guilty of his father's fault; or at any rate the penalty is prolonged the longer, when it extends even to the son and the affliction of the successor reaches into later times.
Much is set forth. This according to the letter. For the rest, it is not so much men as characters that are comprehended here, of which in both there is one nature. For Ham means 'heat,' Canaan means 'commotion' and 'unrest.' And he who is hot is assuredly unquiet and more agitated. In the two, therefore, there was one passion and one disposition. And so, when the one is condemned, both are condemned. Why then does holy Noah, blessing his son Japheth, say: 'May the Lord enlarge Japheth, and may he dwell in the houses of Shem, and may Canaan be his servant'? We have said above that Japheth signifies a good that is, as it were, indifferent. But indifference has a breadth, which lies in health, vigour, beauty, strength, riches, favour, nobility, friends, powers, and the rest.
But although these indifferent things are good, yet they have harmed very many who possessed them without wisdom and righteousness. For riches have made many men drunken, nobility and power have made them proud, beauty has made them lustful, by whose support they have corrupted the chastity of another's mind. Therefore the indifference of these things which we have named is according to the disposition of him who uses them, whose use is either governed by virtues, or else, without the governance of virtues, those things which can be for advantage begin to be for harm. Now, since Noah is said to have lived three hundred and fifty years after the flood, we by no means think this is to be passed over. For it is certain that in the three hundred the cross of Christ is signified, by whose figure the righteous man was delivered from the flood.
In the fifty is the jubilee, the number of remission, in which the Holy Spirit was sent from heaven, pouring grace into human hearts. The number of remission and grace being completed, therefore, the righteous man fulfilled the course of this life. Of the generation of Japheth it says: 'Rhodes and the other islands of the nations are his.' Not without reason is he called breadth, since his generation extended even into the other part of nature, that is, the maritime part. For truly, like breadth, he was not content with that which nature had prescribed for the use of men, that is, the possession of the land, but he even entered the sea and advanced as far as the islands. This according to the letter.
But according to the higher sense, it is because those things which are external, which are called goods — riches, powers, honours — are, as it were, diffused more widely, and the rich are not content only with those things which are in their hands and before their eyes, but spread their desires far and wide, while either a profit of moneys is sought from regions beyond, or honour from a greater number, or a more diffuse power, or lust. Now I ask for what reason Scripture has recorded that Cush was the elder son of that wicked Ham. There are two kinds of earth: one as it were sandy and dusty — nay, to speak more expressly, dust; the other kind of earth fruitful and fertile, that is, earth more solid and deep.
What then does the wicked man beget but dust, from which there can be no generation? And so the prophet compared the ungodly to dust, saying: 'Not so the ungodly, not so; but they are like the dust which the wind drives from the face of the earth,' because also according to the higher sense the soul of the ungodly is barren, being unable to generate useful fruits. For what reason does Cush also beget the giant Nimrod, who was a hunter before God? Whence it is said: 'Like Nimrod the mighty hunter before God.' What else, then, would dust and sand beget but an earthly man, since the ungodly puts earthly things before heavenly? For giants are introduced by the fable as having wished to fight against the things above, and they thought they must ascend to heavenly things by an earthly ascent.
But in the higher sense this is signified: that he who loves earthly pleasures and follows them and thinks that by these he can attain to the grace of God and that the heavenly kingdom is to be reached by errors of this kind, this man wars against heavenly things with a defiant disposition. Therefore it is in a proverb concerning him who shall have offended: 'Like Nimrod the mighty hunter before God.' But Nimrod by interpretation is called 'Ethiopian.' The colour of the Ethiopian signifies the darkness and squalor of the soul, which is contrary to the light, devoid of brightness, wrapped in darkness, liker to night than to day. Of a hunter, too, accustomed to the woods, his manner of life is among wild beasts and brutes.
The irrational man, therefore, mingles with irrational passions, and a hunter of this kind is wont to track out, and to gain possession of, and to delight in, those things which belong to a rustic and very hard malice. Finally, the beginning of Nimrod's kingdom was Babylon, that is, 'confusion,' because malice and power consist not in simplicity and purity, not in the distinction of virtue, but in the confusion of vices.