And he said, cursed, &c.— In consequence of this different behaviour of his sons, Noah, as a patriarch, was enlightened, and as a father of a family, who is to reward or punish his children, was empowered to foretel what should happen to their respective families: for this prophecy relates not so much to themselves as to their posterity, the people and nations descended from them. He was not prompted by wine, or resentment; for neither the one nor the other could infuse the knowledge of futurity, or inspire him with the prescience of events, which happened hundreds, if not thousands, of years afterwards. This, like most of the ancient prophecies, was delivered in metre:
"Cursed be Canaan, A servant of servants shall he be to his brethren: Blessed be Jehovah, the God of Shem; And Canaan shall be their servant. God shall enlarge Japheth, And shall dwell in the tents of Shem, And Canaan shall be their servant."
Canaan was the fourth son of Ham, ch. Genesis 10:6. "And for what reason can you believe, that Canaan was so particularly marked out for the curse? for his father Ham's transgression? But where would be the justice, or equity, to pass by Ham himself, with the rest of his children, or to punish only Canaan for what Ham had committed? Such proceedings are contrary to all our ideas of the divine perfections." The truth is, the curse is to be understood not so properly of Canaan, as of his descendants to late generations. It is thinking meanly of the ancient prophecies, and having very imperfect and unworthy conceptions of them, to limit their intention to particular persons. We must affix a larger meaning to them; and understand them not of single persons, but of whole nations. The curse of servitude pronounced upon Canaan, and the promise of blessing and enlargement made to Shem and Japheth, extend to their whole race for many generations: as afterwards the prophecies concerning Ishmael, Esau, and Jacob, and the twelve patriarchs, were not so properly verified in themselves, as in their posterity. The curse therefore upon Canaan was, properly, a curse upon the Canaanites. God foreseeing the wickedness of that people, (which began in their father Ham, and greatly increased in this branch of his family,) commissioned Noah to pronounce a curse upon them, and to devote them to the servitude and misery, which their more than common vices and iniquities would deserve. And this account was plainly written by Moses for the encouragement of the Israelites, to support and animate them in their expedition against a people, who, by their sins, had forfeited the divine protection, and were destined to slavery from the days of Noah.
Cursed be Canaan— Having seen in the foregoing note the purport of the prophecy, let us attend to the completion of it. Cursed be Canaan: let us observe, there is nothing in the Hebrew for be: it is only cursed Canaan, and may be understood either as an apostrophe, Ah, devoted, wretched
Canaan! or Canaan shall, or will, be cursed. In whatever sense you understand it, certain it is the Canaanites were an abominably wicked (and so a cursed) people. The sin and punishment of Sodom and Gomorrah are well known: and as for the inhabitants of the land which was promised to Abraham and his seed, God bore with them till their iniquity was full, ch. Genesis 15:16. We are told, that every abomination to the Lord, which he hateth, have they done to their gods; for even their sons and their daughters have they burnt in the fire to their gods. Deuteronomy 12:31. Their religion was bad, and their morality (if possible) worse; for corrupt religion and corrupt morals usually generate each other. Read the 18th and 20th Chapter s of Leviticus, and you will find, that unlawful marriages, and unlawful lusts, witchcraft, adultery, incest, sodomy, beastiality, and the like monstrous crimes, were frequent among them. And was not a curse, in the nature of things, as well as by the just judgment of God, deservedly entailed upon such a people and nation as this? See Deuteronomy 9:4.
A servant of servants shall he be to his brethren— It is very well known, that the word brethren, in the Hebrew, comprehends more distant relations. (See Deuteronomy 9:5 of this chapter.) The descendants, therefore of Canaan were to be subject to the descendants of Shem and Japheth: and the natural consequence of vice in communities, as well as in single persons, is slavery. The same thing is repeated again and again in the two following verses, so that this is, as it were, the burden of the prophecy. A servant of servants, is a phrase of the same turn with Holy of holies, Song of songs, King of kings, and imports, that they should be the lowest and basest of servants.
We cannot be certain as to the time of the delivery of this prophecy. If it was delivered soon after the transactions which immediately precede in the history, it was soon after the deluge; and then Canaan was prophesied of before he was born, as it was prophesied of Esau and Jacob, Genesis 25:23 compared with Romans 9:11. If the prophecy was delivered a little before the transactions which immediately follow in the history, it was a little before Noah's death; and he was then enlightened, as Jacob was, to foretel what was to befal his posterity in the latter days, Genesis 49:1. However this matter may be determined, it was several centuries after the delivery of this prophecy, when the Israelites, who were the descendants of Shem, under the command of Joshua, invaded the Canaanites, smote above thirty of their kings, took possession of their land, slew vast numbers of the inhabitants, and made the Gibeonites and others servants and tributaries. Solomon afterwards subdued the rest. See 2 Chronicles 8:7-8. The Greeks and Romans too, who were the descendants of Japheth, not only subdued Syria and Palestine, but also pursued and conquered such of the Canaanites as were any where remaining, as for instance, the Tyrians and Carthaginians; the former of whom were ruined by Alexander and the Grecians, and the latter by Scipio and the Romans. And ever since, the miserable remains of that people have been slaves to a foreign yoke; first to the Saracens, who descended from Shem; and afterwards to the Turks, who descended from Japheth; and they groan under the dominion of the latter to this day.
Hence you see, that this prophecy was not to take place immediately, but was to be fulfilled in process of time, when the descendants of Canaan should forfeit their liberties by their wickedness. Ham at first subdued some of the posterity of Shem, as Canaan sometimes conquered Japheth: the Carthaginians, who were originally Canaanites, did so particularly in Italy and Spain: but in time they were to be subdued, and to become servants to Shem and Japheth; and the change of their condition from good to bad would render the curse still more visible. AEgypt was the land of Ham, and, for many years, a great and flourishing kingdom; but it was subdued by the Persians, who descended from Shem, and afterwards by the Grecians, who descended from Japheth: and, from that time to this, it hath constantly been in subjection to some or other of the posterity of Shem or Japheth. The whole continent of Africa was peopled principally by the children of Ham: and for how many ages have the better parts of that country lain under the dominion of the Romans, and then of the Saracens, and now of the Turks? In what wickedness, ignorance, barbarity, slavery, and misery live most of the inhabitants? And of the poor negroes, how many thousands every year are sold and bought like beasts in the market, and are conveyed from one quarter of the world to do the work of beasts in another? These circumstances have led some eminent commentators to think, that the curse contained in this prophecy extended to the other branches of the posterity of Ham, as well as particularly to the posterity of Canaan. But, I conceive, the text will not justify this interpretation. However, if it do, nothing can be more complete than the execution of the sentence upon Ham, as well as upon Canaan. Let us next consider the promises made to Shem and Japheth.