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It certainly appears likely that the stories we all grew up hearing from the Bible have more in common and more by way of instruction than we ever could have understood, –at least until we were brought to our own understanding by means of sacred introduction, careful instruction, ritual observance, and followed ultimately by divine revelation.
It appears that there is much in the way of symmetry which we can learn about, ponder upon and use to harmonize our own lives in this dreary world.
Thank you introducing our own opportunity!
Dear Brother Bradshaw, I love the topic of this article and have spent some time thinking about these themes. I would offer an alternative possibility to Ham’s transgression involving the nakedness of Noah. My comment also ties to “equating the rainbow with the staff”, an element that I think can be further elaborated.
It seems to me that when we see the symbol of the rainbow, both in the account of the flood and in John’s Revelation, chapter 10, where Christ is seen to have a rainbow on his head, we can fruitfully consider the seven seals ascending the spine (the staff of the body) to the crown of the head, depicted since antiquity through the ascending color spectrum of the rainbow. In this context, the three degrees of glory and the glory of God, and the order of manifesting them to the prophet and the people are modelled throughout the flood story and elsewhere in the scriptures. As you have demonstrated in this article, these themes of revealing the vision of God to the prophet are displayed in the temple, ark, and tent. As prophet, Noah is privileged with “seeing” the divine, and is represented in the sixth highest of seven seals (the seventh, or highest seal, being the embrace, or God’s laying on of hands to the crown of the head, etc.) As such a “seer”, Noah alone holds these keys. His sons, abiding in the next seal down, or fifth seal, “the throat”, are called upon to “hear him” and his spoken word. This is why Shem and Japeth obediently turn their eyes away when entering the tent, and why Ham, in kind of a Hiram Page way, usurps the order of the kingdom of God. In presuming to see and then to tell his brothers about the vision reserved for the prophet holding the keys to that seal at that time, Ham’s interposition brings on the displeasure of God.
This is not to say that God’s people can’t or shouldn’t seek to see the face of God and live, because this is exactly what Moses, a seventh seal prophet, tried to prepare the children of Israel to do. But as described in Exodus, they hardened their hearts and refused to abide in the privileges of the sixth seal when these were offered to them.