Genesis 9:25

25. And he said Render the whole prophecy thus:

Cursed be Canaan,

A servant of servants let him be unto his brethren .

And he said:

Blessed be Jehovah, God of Shem;

And let Canaan be a servant unto them .

Let God enlarge Japheth,

And let him dwell in the tents of Shem,

And let Canaan be a servant unto them .

The futures in this passage have an imperative sense, the prediction taking the form of blessing and imprecation. It will be noted, that in reference to both Shem and Japheth the plural pronoun them is used, showing that each patriarch’s name is used in a collective sense, embracing his posterity. The preposition and suffix למו is incorrectly rendered his in our version, although the margin gives the real meaning. Comp. Ges., Gr., §103, 2, note. There is a play upon words, after the favourite method of the Old Testament writers and speakers, which cannot be well shown in translation. Japheth signifies enlargement, and Noah uses, in the blessing, the verb from which the name is derived. The predictions touched the individuals addressed only as they were interested in their posterity. The sin of Ham and the etymology of the names, furnish starting points for prophecies of world-wide interest. Noah is now, for the first time, made to understand the prophetic significance of the names which, under divine guidance, he had given his children, as Lamech, his father, saw that Noah would be Noah, or Rest, to mankind. The filial piety of Shem and Japheth was the means by which the revealing Spirit lifted the curtain of the future, and showed Noah how the knowledge of Jehovah should make the children of Shem illustrious ( שׁם , name, a great name), how the descendants of Japheth should be spread over vast continents yet unknown, while the sensual impiety of Ham typified the degradation of the children of Canaan, his son, who should be enslaved or exterminated by the Shemites, as the reward of their dreadful iniquities. But this foresight had no causative power, and in no sense necessitated the sin or holiness of those far-off generations; for necessary sin or holiness is an impossibility. Their actions were foreseen, not foreordained.

Cursed be Canaan Not Ham, as might be expected. The prediction begins with the youngest, as his sin was its immediate cause, (compare the order in Genesis 3:14-16,) and as certainly would have been the case had Noah been left to vent a natural ebullition of wrath upon his unnatural son . The curse lights only upon the descendants of Canaan, the youngest son of Ham, and father of the nations who dwelt in Canaan in the time of Abraham, and down to the era of its conquest by Joshua. It is, then, pure assumption to apply the prediction to the African families who descended from the other children of Ham. Shem and Japheth are mentioned by name, but the curse of Ham is expressly limited to Canaan. It is true that in modern times slavery has mostly fallen to the African race, but it is only in extremely modern times; and this slavery is not to be compared in universality or in severity to that which prevailed in ancient times and involved the children of Shem and Japheth as much as those of Ham. Slavery was the normal condition of the masses in the Greek and Roman world. It was a fundamental characteristic of all ancient society. Aristotle, the greatest political philosopher of antiquity, lays it down as an indispensable condition of civilization. ( Polit., i, cap. 3, 6.) Greeks enslaved Greeks, and Roman fathers, at the time of Christ, enslaved their own children.