He said, “Blessed be Yahweh, the God of Shem. Let Canaan be his servant.
Parallel Translations
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He said, “Blessed be Yahweh, the God of Shem. Let Canaan be his servant.
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And he said, Blessed be the LORD God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.
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And he said: Blessed be the LORD, the God of Shem; and let Canaan be their servant.
Examined in Scripture Analysis
Contradictions (1)
Questions where the Bible appears to say two different things, with the passages on each side set together.
Cross-references (9)
Passages linked to Genesis 9:26 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Psalms 144:15 Happy are the people who are in such a situation. Happy are the people whose God is Yahweh.
- Genesis 12:1-3 Now Yahweh said to Abram, “Leave your country, and your relatives, and your father’s house, and go to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great. You will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who treats you with contempt. All the families of the earth will be blessed through you.”
- Hebrews 11:16 But now they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed of them, to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.
- Genesis 10:10-26 The beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Erech, Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. Out of that land he went into Assyria, and built Nineveh, Rehoboth Ir, Calah, and Resen between Nineveh and the great city Calah. Mizraim became the father of Ludim, Anamim, Lehabim, Naphtuhim, Pathrusim, Casluhim (which the Philistines descended from), and Caphtorim. Canaan became the father of Sidon (his firstborn), Heth, the Jebusites, the Amorites, the Girgashites, the Hivites, the Arkites, the Sinites, the Arvadites, the Zemarites, and the Hamathites. Afterward the families of the Canaanites were spread abroad. The border of the Canaanites was from Sidon—as you go toward Gerar—to Gaza—as you go toward Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim—to Lasha. These are the sons of Ham, after their families, according to their languages, in their lands and their nations. Children were also born to Shem (the elder brother of Japheth), the father of all the children of Eber. The sons of Shem were: Elam, Asshur, Arpachshad, Lud, and Aram. The sons of Aram were: Uz, Hul, Gether, and Mash. Arpachshad became the father of Shelah. Shelah became the father of Eber. To Eber were born two sons. The name of the one was Peleg, for in his days the earth was divided. His brother’s name was Joktan. Joktan became the father of Almodad, Sheleph, Hazarmaveth, Jerah,
- Genesis 27:37 Isaac answered Esau, “Behold, I have made him your lord, and all his brothers I have given to him for servants. I have sustained him with grain and new wine. What then will I do for you, my son?”
- Deuteronomy 33:26 “There is no one like God, Jeshurun, who rides on the heavens for your help, in his excellency on the skies.
- Luke 3:23-36 Jesus himself, when he began to teach, was about thirty years old, being the son (as was supposed) of Joseph, the son of Heli, the son of Matthat, the son of Levi, the son of Melchi, the son of Jannai, the son of Joseph, the son of Mattathias, the son of Amos, the son of Nahum, the son of Esli, the son of Naggai, the son of Maath, the son of Mattathias, the son of Semein, the son of Joseph, the son of Judah, the son of Joanan, the son of Rhesa, the son of Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, the son of Neri, the son of Melchi, the son of Addi, the son of Cosam, the son of Elmodam, the son of Er, the son of Jose, the son of Eliezer, the son of Jorim, the son of Matthat, the son of Levi, the son of Simeon, the son of Judah, the son of Joseph, the son of Jonan, the son of Eliakim, the son of Melea, the son of Menan, the son of Mattatha, the son of Nathan, the son of David, the son of Jesse, the son of Obed, the son of Boaz, the son of Salmon, the son of Nahshon, the son of Amminadab, the son of Aram, the son of Hezron, the son of Perez, the son of Judah, the son of Jacob, the son of Isaac, the son of Abraham, the son of Terah, the son of Nahor, the son of Serug, the son of Reu, the son of Peleg, the son of Eber, the son of Shelah, the son of Cainan, the son of Arphaxad, the son of Shem, the son of Noah, the son of Lamech,
- Romans 9:5 of whom are the fathers, and from whom is Christ as concerning the flesh, who is over all, God, blessed forever. Amen.
- Genesis 27:40 You will live by your sword, and you will serve your brother. It will happen, when you will break loose, that you will shake his yoke from off your neck.”
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this verse (14 sources)
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John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain 26. Blessed be the Lord God of Shem. Noah…
26. Blessed be the Lord God of Shem. Noah blesses his other children, but in a different manner. For he places Shem in the highest post of honor. And this is the reason why Noah, in blessing him, breaks forth in the praise of God, without adhering to the person of man. For the Hebrews, when they are speaking of any rare and transcendent excellence, raise their thoughts to God. Therefore the holy man, when he perceived that the most abundant grace of God was destined for his son Shem, rises to thanksgiving. Whence we infer, that he spoke, not from carnal reason, but rather treated of the secret favors of God, the result of which was to be deferred to a remote period. Finally, by these words it is declared, that the benediction of Shem would be divine or heavenly.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain Or, their.
Or, their.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain Gen 9:26 And he said, Blessed [be] the LORD…
Gen 9:26 And he said, Blessed [be] the LORD God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.
Ver. 26. Blessed be the Lord God of Shem.] Shem seems to have been the chief actor and persuader of that reverent behaviour; and therefore, as he is first named, {Gen 9:23} before his elder brother Japhet; so here he hath the first and chief blessing. It is good to be first in a good matter, yea, prompt and "present to every good work," as Paul hath it. {Tit 3:1}
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And Canaan shall be his servant.] This curse was not fulfilled for many hundred years after, till the sins of the Amorites were grown full, and then it was accomplished. God’s forbearance is no acquittance. He can also turn a curse into a blessing, as he did this to Araunah the Jebusite, of the worst and most stubborn of the Canaanites; for they held the Tower of Jebus from the posterity of Shem after all the rest had yielded. {2Sa 5:7} Yet he became a godly proselyte, and gave, as a king, his freehold to King David, to build an altar on, {2Sa 24:18} and this deed of his was long after remembered. {Zec 9:7} The like may be said of the Gibeonites, who are called Nethinims in Ezra and Nehemiah. They were made servants to the Shemites, drawers of water to the temple, as a kind of punishment. God made this cross a mercy. Their employment so near the house of God gave them fit occasion to be partakers of the things of God. And the Lord, we see, did wonderfully honour them; the nearer they were to the church, the nearer to God. It is good getting into his house, though to be but "a doorkeeper" with David, or a water bearer with these Gibeonites. Stand but in God’s way as he passeth, and thou shalt be preferred.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain Blessed be the Lord God of Shem.
Blessed be the Lord God of Shem.
Quest. What is this to Shem? For it is not Shem, but God who is here blessed.
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Answ.
1. Shem also is here blessed, and that in the highest degree, because the Lord hath here declared himself to be Shem’s God. Now for God to be said to be any man’s God, is every where mentioned as the height of blessedness: see Gen 17:7; Psa 144:15; Jer 31:33; Mat 22:32. But the phrase is here justly varied. The curse is fixed upon Ham, because man alone is the author of his own sin, and the cause of his ruin; but because God is the author and fountain of all the good that man either doth or receiveth, therefore the blessing is emphatically given to God, who only doth the work, and of right is to receive all the glory, yet so as it redounds to Shem also. And Shem is here peculiarly mentioned, not Japheth, both for the comfort of the Israelites, whose progenitor he was, and because this blessing was first seated and long continued in Shem’s posterity alone, Japheth’s posterity being for a long time excluded from it; and because the Lord Christ, who is often called the Lord and God in Scripture, did take flesh from Shem; and so the incarnation of Christ may be here foretold, and Shem highly honoured and blessed in this, that he should be the father of Christ according to the flesh, Rom 9:5.
Answ. 2. This may be a short and abrupt manner of speech, which is frequent in the Hebrew tongue; and it may signify that Shem should be so eminently blessed, that men beholding it should be rapt up into admiration, and break forth into the praises of that God who gave such gifts unto men, and did so great things for Shem.
Answ. 3. The words may be otherwise rendered, either thus, Blessed, O Lord God, let Shem be, i.e. Do thou bless him. So it is only the construct from Elohe, for the absolute Elohim, which is not unusual in Scripture. Or thus, Blessed of the Lord God be Shem, or shall Shem be. So here is only a defect of the Hebrew particle min, which is oft wanting.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain And he said, blessed be the Lord God of…
And he said, blessed be the Lord God of Shem,.... Shem was blessed before Japheth, because he was the first and principal in advising and conducting the affair before ascribed to them, as Jarchi on Gen 9:23 suggests; and though the words are in the form of an ascription of blessedness to God, the fountain of all good, and by whose grace Shem was influenced and enabled to do the good he did, for which the Lord's name was to be praised and blessed; yet it includes the blessing of Shem, and indeed the greatest blessing he could possibly enjoy; for what greater blessing is there, than for a man to have God to be his God? this includes everything, all blessings temporal and spiritual; see Psa 144:15 some interpret the God of Shem of Christ, who, according to the human nature, was a descendant of Shem; and according to the divine nature the God of Shem, God over all, blessed for ever, Rom 9:4.
And Canaan shall be his servant; the posterity of Canaan be servants to the posterity of Shem: this was fulfilled in the times of Joshua, when the Israelites, who sprung from Shem, conquered the land of Canaan, slew thirty of their kings, and took their cities and possessed them, and made the Gibeonites, one of the states of Canaan, hewers of wood and drawers of water to them, or the most mean and abject servants.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain The God of Shem - All blessings are included…
The God of Shem - All blessings are included in this. This was the blessing conferred on Abraham and his seed, the God of heaven was not ashamed to be called their God, Heb. xi, 16. Shem is sufficiently recompensed for his respect to his father by this, that the Lord himself puts this honour upon him to be his God; which is a sufficient recompense for all our services and all our sufferings for his name.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain Gen 9:26. Blessed be the Lord God of Shem…
Gen 9:26. Blessed be the Lord God of Shem — Abraham and all his posterity were included in the descendants of Shem, as appears from the next chapter. Our Lord Jesus Christ, therefore, in whom all the nations of the earth are to be blessed, sprang from him. Well, therefore, might Jehovah be called the Lord God of Shem. Most of the worshippers of the true God, before the coming of the Messiah, were of his seed, and afterward the descendants of Shem were the chief instruments of bringing other nations to join in God’s worship, and to partake of the blessings of his salvation. Thus Shem is well recompensed for his respect to his father, and the being thus informed of the blessings that awaited his posterity, must have been a great consolation to him, as it, no doubt, was afterward to the truly pious of his seed.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain Blessed be the Lord God of Shem--rather, "Blessed of…
Blessed be the Lord God of Shem--rather, "Blessed of Jehovah, my God, be Shem,"--an intimation that the descendants of Shem should be peculiarly honored in the service of the true God, His Church being for ages established among them (the Jews), and of them, concerning the flesh, Christ came. They got possession of Canaan, the people of that land being made their "servants" either by conquest, or, like the Gibeonites, by submission [Jos 9:25].
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain 26. Blessed — The blessing of Shem is an…
26. Blessed — The blessing of Shem is an ejaculation of praise, as the patriarch sees that Jehovah, the one only God, will be the God of his children, the Hebrew people. This made them a nation, and gave them an historic position grander than was ever occupied by any other people, making the Hebrew character, ritual, and literature the channels of the sublimest moral and religious truths to the world. Thus has the world learned, or rather remembered, the momentous truths of the unity, spirituality, and holiness of God, and the unity, spirituality, and depravity of man.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 26. Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem]…
26. Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem] The blessing invoked, not upon Shem himself, but upon Jehovah the God of Shem, is intended to convey the thought that herein will lie the true welfare of the descendants of Shem. The point of this oracle is, of course, dependent on the fact that Shem is to be the ancestor of Israel. The blessing here invoked has reference only to the Hebrews whose God is Jehovah. They are the favoured ones: the God of Redemption will manifest Himself in them. After “Cursed be Canaan,” we should expect to read “Blessed of Jehovah be Shem.” But there hardly seems to be sufficient reason for regarding the text as corrupt. Graetz, who is followed by Gunkel, with a slight alteration of the text, viz. by the transposition of two consonants and by a different reading of the vowels (which of course did not appear in early Hebrew writing), reads, “bless, oh! Jehovah, the tents of Shem” (אהלי שם for אלהי שם), so that “the tents of Shem” should end this line as well as line 2 in the next verse.
his servant] The translation of the margin, their, is to be preferred. The word in the Hebrew is a poetical form of the plural pronoun; and here the reference is to Canaan’s brethren.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (26) Blessed be Jehovah.—The greatness of Shem’s blessing is…
(26) Blessed be Jehovah.—The greatness of Shem’s blessing is shown by its taking the form of a hymn of praise to Jehovah, the personal God; and the patriarch’s fervent outburst of thanksgiving was a presage of the hallelujahs that were to arise unto God from all mankind for the birth of that son of Shem in whom all nations were to be blessed. The following words should be translated, And let Canaan be their servant, the servant both of Shem and Japheth. (See margin.)
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain And he said not "Blessed of Jehovah, my God,…
And he said not "Blessed of Jehovah, my God, be Shem" (Jamieson), as might have been anticipated (this, equally with the omission of Ham"s name, lifts the entire patriarchal utterance out of the region of mere personal feeling), butBlessed when applied to God signifies an ascription of praise (cf. Psa_144:15; Eph_1:3) when applied to man, an invocation of good (cf. Gen_14:19, Gen_14:20; Psa_128:1; Heb_7:6) be the Lord God literally, Jehovah, Elohim of Shem; (cf. Gen_24:27) Jehovah being the proper personal name of God, of whom it is predicated that he is the Elohim of Shem; equivalent to a statement not simply that Shem should enjoy a rare and transcendent," "Divine or heavenly," blessing (Calvin), or "a most abundant blessing, reaching its highest point in the promised Seed" (Luther); but that Jehovah, the one living and true God, should be his God, and that the knowledge and practice of the true religion should continue among his descendants, with, perhaps, a hint that the promised Seed should spring from his loins (OEeolampadius, Willet, Murphy, Keil, &c.);of Shem . In the name Shem (name, renown) there may lie an allusion to the spiritual exaltation and advancement of the Semitic nations. (vide Gen_5:32) And Canaan shall be his servant. wOml= shl (Chaldee, Syriac, Arabic), i.e. the two brothers (Delitzsch), their descendants (Knobel, Keil), Shem and Jehovah (Bush); or more probably wOl, as a collective singular (cf. Gesenius, 2), i.e. Shem, including his descendants (LXX, aujtou; Kalisch, Lange, Murphy).
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 General Information:
General Information:
If you can, format these verses as they are formatted here to show your readers that this is poetry.
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May Yahweh, the God of Shem, be blessed
"Praised be Yahweh, the God of Shem," or "Yahweh, the God of Shem, is worthy of praise" or "I praise Yahweh, the God of Shem"
May Canaan be his servant
"And let Canaan be Shem's servant." This includes Canaan's and Shem's descendants.
May God extend the territory of Japheth
Possible meanings are 1) "May God make Japheth's territory larger" or 2) "May God cause Japheth to have many descendants."
let him make his home in the tents of Shem
"let him leave peacefully with Shem." This includes Japheth's and Shem's descendants.
May Canaan be his servant
"Let Canaan be Japheth's servant." This includes Canaan's and Japheth's descendants.
translationWords
bless
Yahweh
God
Shem
Canaan
servant
Japheth
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 9:26 Noah refers to God as the Lord, who…
9:26 Noah refers to God as the Lord, who formed the covenant with Israel. Shem was the privileged forefather of the Israelites (see 10:21-32).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.