Genesis 9:22

Summary

The verse reports that Ham, identified by the epithet "father of Canaan," saw the nakedness of his father and then went and told his two brothers about it while they were outside. The Hebrew uses two chained narrative verbs to present this as a sequence: seeing, then telling.

Key words

• yar ("he saw", H7200G) — qal narrative form, marking the first event in the sequence: a straightforward act of perception, not judgment.
• avi ("[the] father of", H0001G) — masculine singular construct, used twice in the verse in two separate genitive chains: once identifying Ham as "father of Canaan," and once identifying whose nakedness is seen ("his father").
• ervat ("[the] nakedness of", H6172) — feminine singular construct, forming a noun phrase with the following avi ("father"); the text states only the fact of nakedness with no accompanying verb describing an act of exposure.
• yagged ("he told", H5046) — hiphil (causative) narrative form of the root meaning "to declare/report"; the causative stem frames the action as making information known to others, rather than a simple statement.
• chuts ("outside", H2351) — masculine singular noun with prefixed preposition and article (ba-), functioning as a locative phrase, "in the outside," marking where the telling occurred.

What the text says

The sentence is built from two narrative-vav clauses in sequence: va-yar ("and he saw") followed by va-yagged ("and he told"). Both verbs share the same subject, Ham, who is introduced with the construct phrase avi Khena'an ("father of Canaan") — an identifying epithet attached to his name rather than a statement about the following action. The object of sight is expressed through a second construct chain, ervat avi ("nakedness of [his] father"), marked by the direct object particle 'et (H0853). The Hebrew states the fact of nakedness as a noun phrase; no verb of uncovering or disrobing appears in this clause. The final phrase, ba-chuts ("in the outside"), is a locative modifier attached to the telling, indicating the two brothers were outside when informed — the Hebrew does not state that Ham went outside to tell them, only that the telling occurred while they were "outside."

Differences between versions

The LXX adds the participle ἐξελθὼν ("having gone out") before "he told," an action not present in the Hebrew, which only locates the brothers ba-chuts ("outside") without describing Ham's movement. The Vulgate renders the noun phrase ervat aviv ("nakedness of his father") with the added verbal notion "esse nudata" ("to have been uncovered"), whereas the Hebrew construct phrase states only "nakedness of his father" without a corresponding verb of uncovering.