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Cursed be Canaan

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The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Michigan · Aug 14, 1866

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 28, No. 11.

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"Cursed be Canaan."

In the Chicago Tribune of March 13, 1866, appeared an article on this subject, which a brother has sent in for our consideration. From it we make the following extract:
"The imprecation uttered by Father Noah, upon his recovery from his intoxication, has been a relief to many troubled consciences, who found no comfort in the golden rule or in Christ's gospel of deliverance to them that are bound. The Declaration of Independence asserts the equal rights of man; the whole voice of modern civilization enforced the demand, and our own consciences cannot but approve it. But did not Noah decree that the sons of Ham should be slaves? and is not the negro a son of Ham? and shall we, in the face of such a law, recognize him as a man and as a brother?
"We love the Bible, because we consider it the great charter of the rights, as well as the gospel of the hopes of man, and we should be sorry to find in it a command that Mississippi should enslave her black children, or that we should deny the rights of men, who have fought by our side, and have astonished friends as well as foes by so many proofs of equal manhood. But what answer shall we make to the command? We answer,
"1. That no man can prove that the negro is a son of Ham. The sons of Ham whom we are able to identify by the light of scripture—the old Babylonians, Ethiopians, Egyptians, and Phoenicians,—were not negroes, but Caucasians like ourselves, and distinguished from the negro race by the same wide and permanent physical characteristics which distinguish us.
"2. Noah did not curse the sons of Ham. The imprecation reads: 'And he said, cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall be he unto his brethren. And he said, blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem and Canaan shall be his servant.' Only Canaan, then, among the sons of Ham, is under the curse, and the Canaanites were certainly not negroes.
"We may say further, that, interpreting the prophecy by its fulfillment, it does not entail personal slavery. The days of slavery are almost done, and the Canaanites, and indeed all whom we can recognize as sons of Ham, have furnished far less than their proportion of slaves, and far more than their proportion of masters. Sodom and Gomorrah were full of wealth as well as of lust, until their sudden destruction. The other tribes of Palestine continued rich and strong till the Hebrew invasion swept them away; and the Hebrews, with this curse in their hands, were commanded to destroy them—not to keep them as slaves. There remained of the sons of Canaan, 'Sidon, his first born,' the Phoenicians, the rich merchants of Tyre and Carthage, in whose hands for centuries was the trade and the wealth of the world. They were no poor hunted barbarians of the Guinea coast. They were the slave-traders and the slaveholders. They sold the Hebrew sons of Shem to the Greek sons of Japheth, and the Greeks to the Hebrews, but were themselves slaves to neither.
"This may be sufficient for an answer to those who are accustomed to urge this text. If we cannot show that the negroes are sons of Ham; nor that the sons of Ham are under the curse; nor that the curse entails personal slavery, we shall not recognize it as requiring our people to keep the men who have helped to save our nation, under the heel of those who have tried to destroy it.
In the same paper of March 15, appeared the following from Wm. S. Speer, in explanation of the imprecation of Noah upon Canaan:
"Editor Chicago Tribune :
"SIR—In your issue of the 13th, I find an editorial of singular interest under the above caption. You are clearly right in excluding from the prophetic curse, Ham and all his posterity, excepting only one son, Canaan; and in asserting that Canaan was not a negro, nor the ancestor of negroes. I agree with you that the prophecy rightly interpreted does not import, nor by its fulfillment, does it entail, personal slavery under Shem as a master.
"And, now, sir, will you allow me to explain what the text does mean? The explanation is easy and shall be short. Three preliminary points stated, the exposition will be clear.
1. Moses wrote the book of Genesis while leading the children of Israel through the wilderness, to encourage them to go up and possess the land promised to their fathers, by detailing the history of their ancestors in one unbroken lineage back to Adam. Almost everything is excluded from the book of Genesis except what was of especial interest to the Jews as a people. We shall see immediately that this "cursed be Canaan," was in reality a national enrichment and blessing to the Jews.
"2. The phrase 'a servant of servants shall be he unto his brethren' means that his brethren should themselves be servants and that he should serve them while they were serving others. I have myself seen servants of servants. While I was Consul at Zanzibar, I had in my employ as a spy, one of the Sultan's bought servants who himself owned ten slaves. At Quilimane there lives a Portuguese master named Azevedo, who owns a slave that owns 500 slaves.
"3. I take it that Canaan in the fulfillment of the prophecy must be interpreted of the descendants of Canaan—the Canaanites who dwell in Palestine.
"Now it is a fact that, while the children of Israel were serving the Egyptians (215 years) the Canaanites were building cities, improving farms and gardens, planting orchards, and vineyards in Palestine, for the said children of Israel then serving in bondage. And thus the prophecy was fulfilled to the letter as to Shem.
"For this obvious interpretation of this celebrated text, candor requires me to state that I am indebted to Ovid Butler, of Indianapolis, well known as a pioneer Abolitionist, a sterling patriot, a Christian gentleman, and one of the best thinkers in the West."