Genesis 9:26

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

And he said, Blessed be the LORD God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.

Blessed be the Lord God of Shem. Quest. What is this to Shem? For it is not Shem, but God who is here blessed. 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 . 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, . 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.

Genesis 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, 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. 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. Yet he became a godly proselyte, and gave, as a king, his freehold to King David, to build an altar on, and this deed of his was long after remembered. 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.

(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.)

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” (ΰδμιων for ΰμδιων), 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.

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.