Please explain Genesis 9:25: Was Canaan cursed for a sin committed by his father, Ham?

Notice what happened: “And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brothers without. And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father’s nakedness. And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him” (Gen. 9:22-24).

The implication is that an illicit sexual act took place. Noah was intoxicated (Gen 9:21), unaware of what was happening.

The problem in understanding exactly what took place arises because of grammatical awkwardness. A similar problem is found in Exodus 34:28 (Old King James version): “And he [Moses] was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights; he did neither eat bread, nor drink water. And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments.” It would seem that “he wrote” is a reference to Moses. But Exodus 31:18 and Deuteronomy 9:10 are proof that God wrote the Ten Commandments on the stone tables. The New King James version makes this clear by capitalizing the pronoun “He,” in Exodus 34:28.

Considering this, the misunderstanding in Genesis 9:1-29 can be cleared up. The emphasis in Gen 9:24 is on Canaan being Ham’s son. He is referred to as such twice in the scripture. The pronoun “his” is a reference to Ham, not Noah. Genesis 10:6 shows that Canaan was Ham’s youngest son. Therefore, we can see that Canaan was not punished for something his father, Ham, had done, but rather was punished for a sin that he himself had committed.