Curse of Ham Japheth? And why will Japheth "dwell in the tents of Shem"? Further difficulties include Ham's being referred to as "the youngest son", when all other lists make him Noah's second son. Per Sarna, the biggest challenge of the narrative is why Canaan was cursed, rather than Ham, and the concealed details of the shameful incident bear the same reticence of Reuben's sexual transgression. The narrative's short five verses indicate that Canaan's Hamite paternity must have had great significance to the narrator or redactor, according to Sarna, who adds, "The curse on Canaan, invoked in response to an act of moral
Simeon (son of Jacob) Simeon (son of Jacob) According to the Book of Genesis, Simeon () was the second son of Jacob and Leah, and the founder of the Israelite Tribe of Simeon. However, some Biblical scholars view this as postdiction, an eponymous metaphor providing an etiology of the connectedness of the tribe to others in the Israelite confederation. With Leah as a matriarch, Biblical scholars regard the tribe as having been believed by the text's authors to have been part of the original Israelite confederation, however, the tribe is absent from the parts of the Bible which textual scholars regard as the oldest