Genesis 9:25

Summary

Genesis 9:25 records Noah's pronouncement after learning what happened involving his son Ham (implied by context, not in this verse). The verse consists of a spoken curse: Canaan is declared cursed, and a fate of servitude to his brothers is announced using a Hebrew superlative construction.

Key words

• arur ("cursed", H0779) — a qal passive participle, not a finite verb; it functions as a declarative curse-formula rather than "I curse," meaning the state of being cursed is asserted directly onto the subject.
• Kena'an ("Canaan", H3667G) — proper name, grammatical subject of the participle arur.
• 'eved ("a slave of", H5650) — masculine singular noun in the construct state, meaning it must be joined to what follows to complete its sense ("slave of...").
• 'avadim ("slaves", H5650) — plural of the same noun as 'eved; paired with the construct form it produces the idiom "slave of slaves," a superlative pattern (compare "song of songs").
• yihyeh ("he will be", H1961) — qal imperfect, indicating an action or state projected into the future or as ongoing.

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative verb vayomer ("and he said," H0559), introducing direct speech. The first clause, arur Kena'an, places the passive participle arur before its subject Kena'an — a common Hebrew word order for curse formulas, where the participial predicate leads. Because arur is a participle rather than a finite verb, the Hebrew does not state who performs the cursing; it presents Canaan's cursed status as a declared fact within the speech act.

The second clause, 'eved 'avadim yihyeh le'echav, uses the construct chain 'eved 'avadim — literally "slave of slaves" — a Hebrew grammatical device where a singular noun in construct followed by its own plural form intensifies the meaning, producing a superlative sense ("lowest of slaves" or "slave among slaves"). The verb yihyeh (imperfect of hayah, H1961) projects this condition into future or ongoing time, and the phrase closes with le'echav ("to his brothers," H0251G with the possessive suffix -o, "his"), marking the relational direction of the servitude — toward Canaan's own brothers.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the construct superlative 'eved 'avadim as παῖς οἰκέτης ("child, servant" — two appositional nouns), differing structurally from the Hebrew genitive-chain idiom. The Vulgate's servus servorum preserves the Hebrew's construct-superlative pattern closely, as does RV1909's siervo de siervos. SBLIBRE instead interprets the superlative sense explicitly as "el último de los esclavos" ("the last of the slaves"), making explicit an interpretive reading of the Hebrew idiom rather than reproducing its literal repetition.