Noah 4 – Something To Do With Respect

And so, Ham makes this desperate error
And is careless about
Exposing himself
To the vulnerability of his father
Something like that
He does it without sufficient respect
And the judgment is that
Not only will he be a slave
But so will all of his descendents
And he's contrasted with the other two sons who
I suppose are willing to give their father
The benefit of the doubt
Something like that
And so when they see him in a compromising position
They handle it with respect
And don't capitalize on it
And maybe that makes them strong
That's what it seems to me
And so I think that's what that story means
[Chorus]
It has something to do with respect
Something to do with respect
Something to do with respect
Something, something to do with respect

You know, and the funny thing About
Having respect for your culture
And I suppose that's partly
Why I'm doing the biblical stories is because
They're part of my culture
They're part of our culture, perhaps
But they're certainly part of my culture
And it seems to me that
It's worthwhile to treat that with respect
To see what you can glean from it
And
And not kick it when it's down, let's say

[Chorus]
It has something to do with respect
Something to do with respect
Something to do with respect
Something, something to do with respect

[Chorus]
It has something to do with respect
Something to do with respect
Something to do with respect
Something, something to do with respect

So
And so that's how the story of Noah ends
The thing, too, is
Noah is actually
A pretty decent incarnation of the spirit of the father
Which I suppose is one of the things
That makes Ham's
Misstep more egregious
I mean, Noah just built an ark
And got everybody through the flood, man
You know
It's not so bad
And so maybe
The fact that he happened to drink
Too much wine one day
Wasn't enough
To justify humiliating him
And, you know
I don't think it's pushing the limits
Of symbolic interpretation
To note on a daily basis
That we're all contained in an ark
You could think about that
As the ark that's been bequeathed to us
By our forefathers
That's the tremendous infrastructure
That we inhabit
That we take for granted
Because it works so well
It protects us from things that
We can't even imagine
And we don't have to imagine
Because we're so well protected