Genesis 9:27

Summary

Genesis 9:27 is a poetic blessing/prophecy pronounced over Noah's sons: God is asked to make space for Japheth, for someone to dwell in the tents of Shem, and for Canaan to become a servant to them. The verse is built from three parallel jussive (wish/command) clauses.

Key words

• yaft ("may he make spacious", H6601A) — hiphil jussive, causative "make wide/enlarge"; its sound closely echoes the name Yefet ("Japheth", H3315) that follows, producing a wordplay not reproducible in translation.
• 'Elohim ("God", H0430G) — grammatically plural noun functioning as the subject of the first jussive verb.
• yishkon ("let him dwell", H7931) — qal imperfect with vav, jussive force; the subject (3rd person masculine singular) is not named, leaving open whether it continues from 'Elohim or shifts to Yefet.
• 'ohole ("tents of", H0168G) — construct plural, "tents of [Shem]", forming a construct chain with Shem (H8035).
• lamo ("to them", H9038) — an archaic/poetic pronominal suffix attached to the preposition le (H9005); in poetic Hebrew this form can carry either a plural ("to them") or singular ("to him") sense.

What the text says

The verse consists of three short jussive clauses strung together with the conjunction ve ("and", H9002): "may he make spacious... may he dwell... may he be." Each verb is third-person masculine singular, so the grammatical subject must be inferred from context rather than marked explicitly by pronoun. In the first clause the subject is stated ('Elohim), but the second clause, yishkon ("let him dwell", H7931), gives no named subject — it could continue with 'Elohim as subject (God dwelling in Shem's tents) or shift to Yefet (Japheth dwelling there), since both are grammatically valid 3ms referents in the preceding clause.

The construct phrase 'ohole Shem ("tents of Shem", H0168G + H8035) marks Shem's dwelling as the location where this subject comes to reside. The final clause, introduced by vihi ("let him be", H1961, jussive of hayah), names Kena'an ("Canaan", H3667G) as the grammatical subject, with 'eved ("a slave", H5650) as predicate noun, followed by lamo ("to them", H9038) — a poetic dative form whose suffix can be read as referring to a plural entity (Shem and Japheth together) or, in some poetic usage, as a singular "to him."

Differences between versions

The subject of "dwell" is resolved differently across versions. The Hebrew leaves it grammatically ambiguous. The LXX (κατοικησάτω, "let him dwell") and the Vulgate (habitet, "let him dwell") likewise use unmarked third-person forms, preserving the same ambiguity as the Hebrew. Modern translations diverge in how they render this: BSB keeps an ambiguous "he," while SBLIBRE explicitly supplies "Jafet" as the subject, resolving grammatically what the Hebrew text itself leaves open.