Genesis 9:25-27

"And he said, Cursed be Canaan; A servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. And he said, Blessed be Jehovah the God of Shem; And let Canaan be his servant. God enlarge Japheth, And let him dwell in the tents of Shem; And let Canaan be his servant."

"Cursed be Canaan ..." What Cain was to the antediluvian world, Canaan was to the world after the flood. He was the ancestor of the Canaanites who preceded Israel in the land of Palestine, and the preoccupation of that entire Canaanite culture with their vulgar sex gods, which they worshiped with the most abominable rites, indicates clearly that they partook of the nature of their infamous ancestor. This also lends strong presumptive proof that the nature of Canaan's sin was sexual. Significantly, it was precisely that evil culture which later overwhelmed Ephraim and the whole northern kingdom of Israel, through which, in turn, the southern kingdom also fell and was carried away by Babylon.

This did not mean that every individual person of Canaan's posterity would be wicked, but merely that this would be the predominating nature of the population descended from him. It is a prophecy of what would happen, not a requirement that it had to happen. The efforts of the advocates of slavery to justify their enslavement of the black race during the last century in America were founded upon total misunderstanding of this passage. God never justified the enslavement of any people, and the condition of servitude imposed upon the posterity of Canaan was not a divine visitation upon them as a vindictive judgment, but the predicted result of their preoccupation with sex. Significantly, the land of Canaan, historically, was never free and independent, but always dominated by the great world powers.

"Blessed be Jehovah, the God of Shem ..." This means, that in a particular sense, God would be identified as "the God of Shem," through whom the Messiah would come for human redemption. This is the prophetic designation of Shem as the patriarch through whom Jesus would be born.

"Enlarge Japheth ..." This prophesied the multiplication of his posterity, which was remarkably fulfilled in the proliferation of the populations of Europe and other places where so-called Western Civilization prevailed.

"Let him dwell in the tents of Shem ..." Depending upon whether the "him" in this passage refers to God or to Japheth, two various interpretations have been proposed. The humorous view that the Caucasians shall live "in the tents of Shem," is said to be fulfilled in that most of them pay rent to Jewish landlords! We do not think this is what the text meant. Unger is probably correct: "`He (God) shall dwell in the tents of Shem,' another reference to the spiritual blessings upon Israel through the Messianic line."[20]