Canaan

The term that is transliterated as “Canaan” in English is translated in American Sign Language with the sign loosely referencing the act of hiding/covering one’s face in shame. The association of “shame” with the name “Canaan” comes from Genesis 9, specifically verse 9:25. This sign was adapted from a similar sign in Kenyan Sign Language (see here). (Source: Ruth Anna Spooner, Ron Lawer)


“Canaan” in American Sign Language, source: Deaf Harbor

Click or tap here to see a short video clip about Canaan in biblical times (source: Bible Lands 2012)

Noah's Prayer

The following is a stained glass window from the Three choir windows in the Marienkirche, Frankfurt (Oder), Germany, of the 14th century, depicting Noah praying with Shem and Japheth:

Source: Der gläserne Schatz: Die Bilderbibel der St. Marienkirche in Frankfurt (Oder), Neuer Berlin Verlag, 2005, copyright for this image: Brandenburgisches Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologisches Landesmuseum

Stained glass is not just highly decorative, it’s a medium which has been used to express important religious messages for centuries. Literacy was not widespread in the medieval and Renaissance periods and the Church used stained glass and other artworks to teach the central beliefs of Christianity. In Gothic churches, the windows were filled with extensive narrative scenes in stained glass — like huge and colorful picture storybooks — in which worshipers could ‘read’ the stories of Christ and the saints and learn what was required for their religious salvation. (Source: Victoria and Albert Museum )

See also other stained glass windows from the Marienkirche in Frankfurt.

complete verse (Genesis 9:25)

Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Genesis 9:25:

  • Kankanaey: “he said, ‘Later indeed (predictive formula) Canaan will be punished and he will become the lowest/least-important slave of his siblings.” (Source: Kankanaey Back Translation)
  • Newari: “Then he said, ‘May a curse fall on Canaan. And he will also be a servant for the servants of his brothers.'” (Source: Newari Back Translation)
  • Hiligaynon: “he said: ‘You will-be-cursed Canaan! You will-become the lowest slave of your siblings.'” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
  • English: “He said, ‘I am cursing Ham’s youngest son, Canaan, and his descendants. They will be like slaves to their uncles.” (Source: Translation for Translators)

Translation commentary on Genesis 9:25

Note that both Revised Standard Version and Good News Translation, like most other modern versions, print verses 25-27 in indented lines. This is to show the somewhat poetic form of these lines. The lines are short and the thoughts tightly compressed. Verse 25 begins with a curse on Canaan that is balanced in 26-27 with blessings for Shem and Japheth. Each of the verses ends with a refrain concerning the slave status of Canaan in relation to his brothers. The content of this short passage can be more effectively read if it is printed in lines that reveal its poetic structure.

If we take the story as a simple narrative, it seems very strange that Noah’s curse is against Canaan rather than against Ham. One explanation of this is that the words for “Ham the father of” in verse 22 should be dropped, so that it was in fact Canaan who saw the naked Noah. This of course conflicts with other details in the text of chapters 9 and 10.

Others suggest that the purpose of these verses is to lay the groundwork for the later conflict between the descendants of Shem (Israelites) and the descendants of Canaan (Canaanites) in the taking of the promised land. Thus Cursed be Canaan is thought to be a curse that really relates to the subjugation of the Canaanites to Israel. Furthermore, the association of the curse of Canaan with sexual misbehavior is interpreted as being related to Canaanite sexual practices in their religious life. In this regard Lev 18.24-30 is often cited.

Another school of thought attaches to the names of Shem, Ham, Japheth, and Canaan a bewildering array of nations, but with little or no historical evidence. However, it is also possible that these names are the names of individuals, and that they should not be associated with anyone but themselves.

Also to be considered is the suffering of children for the sins of the fathers, a theme that is put forward and later opposed in the Old Testament.

While there may be some truth in these explanations, they do not solve for translators the problems associated with the use of the name Canaan in the text that they have to translate. As the text stands there seem to be two possibilities open to translators.
(1) The first is to understand that the curse is really against Ham, but that it is directed against his son Canaan because the effect of the curse is for future generations. But if this is the case, there is a problem in the use of the term his brothers at the end of the verse, since that reference must be to Shem and Japheth. There are, however, other places in Genesis where the Hebrew ʾach, which normally means “brother,” is used of other close male relatives; Revised Standard Version translates the term “kinsman” or “kinsmen” in 13.8; 14.14, 16; 29.12, 15. One recent translation, for instance, has a footnote which says that the Hebrew term for “brothers” can also mean “uncles” (literally “relatives on the father’s side”). This approach is recommended for translators in situations where an explanation like this about kinship terms is meaningful.
(2) The second possibility is to take the name Canaan as being used as a substitute for the name of the person who is really intended, Ham. In some cultures and languages where the avoidance of personal names is normal, the name of the son of a person is automatically substituted for the person’s own name; and the text as it stands is naturally taken that way in these language situations. Where this is not the case, a note can give this explanation to readers; and this is recommended for translators who are not able to follow (1) above.

Cursed translates a form of the same verb used in 3.14 and also in 3.17; 4.11; 5.29. See 3.14 for discussion. In languages that do not use the passive, it will often be necessary to restructure Cursed be to say, for example, “I curse Canaan,” “Canaan, I curse you,” or as Good News Translation “A curse on Canaan.” In languages that have a regular formula for cursing, that formula will usually be appropriate in this context.

A slave of slaves translates what is literally “slave slaves,” which is a kind of superlative meaning “the lowest of slaves,” “the most miserable slave.” Speiser says “The phrase points evidently to the inferior social and political status of Canaanites.” He goes on to ask “Was this an accomplished fact at the time of composition, or is the allusion no more than a wishful projection into the future, as the context would seem to suggest?” Slave translates the Hebrew word for a male slave or servant. The reference here is to someone who is fully under the authority and control of a master.

In some languages there is no term for slave but only something akin to “worker” or “employee.” In these cases it may be necessary to say, for example, “You will be the poorest of all your brothers’ workers,” “You will work for your brothers harder than any other worker,” or “Your brothers will force you to work more than any other worker.” Translators should consider providing a footnote, if the term for “slave” is not suitable.

Quoted with permission from Reyburn, William D. and Fry, Euan McG. A Handbook on Genesis. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1997. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .

servant / slave

While the Greek term doulos in the New Testament and ‘ebed in the Old Testament refer to slightly different concepts (unlike in New Testament Judea in Old Testament Israel and Judah, Hebrew servants/slaves were required to be released after six years of labor and, regardless of when they started their servitude, all Hebrew servants were to be automatically freed during the year of Jubilee), translation issues are somewhat similar.

Joel Baden (2025, p. 65ff.) says this about the Hebrew term used in the Old Testament / Hebrew Bible:

“The English words ‘servant’ and ‘slave’ have decidedly different connotations. ‘Servant’ has the sense of ‘employee.’ ‘Slave,’ by contrast, carries with it the ideas of an owned and controlled body, of violence and dishonor. The connotation of ‘servant’ can verge on the positive; ‘slave’ is predominantly negative. How a reader of the Bible understands the identity of a character or the relationship between one character and another or the world of ancient Israel depends significantly on whether the word ‘servant’ or ‘slave’ is used. In Hebrew, however, there is but one word underlying every occurrence of ‘servant’ and ‘slave’ in our modern translations. The distinction between the two exists only on the level of interpretation.

“It is not a matter of mere nomenclature. Take the story of Genesis 24, in which Abraham sends his servant off to find a wife for Isaac. The servant — though the main character of the passage — has no name and is identified only by his title, which he even uses to introduce himself: ‘I am Abraham’s servant,’ he says (Genesis 24:34, Jewish Publication Society). This is often read as a warm story about a devoted servant — usually imagined to be relatively old — who carries out the elderly patriarch’s final wishes. How does it change, how do we reimagine it, when we read all thirteen mentions of Abraham’s servant as, in fact, Abraham’s slave? We know Abraham has slaves: His ‘servant’ even says so in this very chapter in the very next verse: ‘The Lord has greatly blessed my master, and he has become rich: he has given him sheep and cattle, silver and gold, male and female slaves, camels and asses’ (24:35, JPS). Yet generations of translators, interpreters, and readers have failed to connect the slaves (the property with which God has blessed Abraham) and the servant — the slave who is the protagonist of this same story.

“When slaves are turned into servants, the Bible itself is changed. Our revulsion at the institution of slavery is kept at a distance from the biblical text that stands as our religious heritage. The Bible is protected, albeit from itself. Slavery is minimized, or worse: The King James Version, notably, does not translate ‘ebed as ‘slave’ a single time. The result? Some KJV readers have denied that there is any slavery in the Bible whatsoever. Yet the word ‘ebed appears around 800 times in the Bible. That’s 800 moments when a slave, and the existence of slavery in ancient Israel and the biblical text, has been erased.

“The social role that we associate with the term ‘servant’ didn’t exist in ancient Israel. Slaves, however, did. Israel knew what it was to be a slave, and Israel knew, too, what it was to own a slave. And thus Israel uses the language and metaphor of slavery again and again to express the basic notions of obedience, of power disparity, of bodily control and the absence of agency. Samuel says to Yahweh upon being called, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening’ (1 Samuel 3:9, JPS). ‘Let my lord go ahead of his servant,’ Jacob says to Esau in Genesis 33:14 (JPS). Rendered as ‘servant’ in every translation, this is a sort of formally obsequious, self-abnegating speech. While literal slavery is not at stake in these sorts of expressions, the metaphorical reference to the relative status of slave and master is lost when it is translated as ‘servant.’

“So, too, when those figures who are the ‘ebed to a king are referred to as ‘courtiers,’ ‘officials,’ ‘attendants,’ ‘soldiers,’ ‘subjects,’ ‘envoys,’ ‘ministers,’ or even sometimes simply ‘men,’ of the king. These are all translations of the same word, and the instinct to specify their distinctive roles in the royal court is understandable. Yet in doing so, translations obscure the actual language with the connotations that it presents: subordination, threat of violence to one’s person, absolute control over will and agency. And so, too, when it is not a human king but God to whom one is said to be ‘ebed. In the book of Joshua, God states, ‘My servant Moses is dead’ (1:2, JPS) — we are relatively comfortable with the idea of serving God but perhaps less so with the idea of being God’s slave. Yet the qualities of obedience, subservience, and loyalty — and the implicit threat of punishment for the lack thereof — are part of this picture as well. One might point to the way this language is picked up in the New Testament in the phrase ‘slave of Christ’ in 1 Corinthians 7:22.

“If ‘servants’ and ‘slaves’ are not understood to be equivalent — and in modern English it is safe to say that they are not — then every time that the word ‘ebed appears, a choice has to be made by the translator. The diminishment of the very word ‘slave’ in English translations of the Hebrew Bible results in the diminishment of the idea and reality of slavery in the Bible and in the world that produced it. Though there is no debate to be had about whether there was slavery in the Bible and in ancient Israel, a lay reader of the text in translation might well wonder.

“Our ears, and eyes, have become accustomed to seeing the word ‘servant’ in the Bible. ‘Slave’ often sounds wrong, inapt, almost harsh. Yet it is just this discomfort that signals how important the change is. Whenever we encounter the word ‘servant’ in our English translations, we should be obliged to ask why it says ‘servant’ and not ‘slave’ — and what difference it would make to our reading of the text as an individual, as a community, and as a culture if we were instead to read ‘slave.’”

Ruden (2021, p. lviii) says this about the Greek term in the New Testament:

“In Judea, servitude was sui generis and could be complicated, and accordingly the Greek vocabulary in scripture is varied. But there appears to be no basis for sugarcoating the word meaning a chattel slave in nearly all Greek literature, doulos. It is unlikely that the internationally oriented authors of the Gospels didn’t mean what their peers meant by the word — ‘slave.’ Also, the English word ‘servant’ is too vague for the array of servitors (including trusted house slaves and personal attendants), military and administrative subordinates, and ritual helpers the Greek of the Gospels distinguishes.”

Some English New Testament translations (Ruden 2021, Hart 2017, The Orthodox New Testament 2004) have consistently used slave for the Greek doulos but no Old Testament translation consistently translates ‘ebed with only one term.

In a number of leading German translations, including the Catholic Einheitsübersetzung (1980 / 2016) and the Protestant Elberfelder Bibel (1871 / 2006), BasisBibel (2021), as well as the translation by Luther (all editions) use the term Knecht throughout. Knecht is an old-fashioned term for a low-class, often agricultural servant with little or no social mobility, a position that is somewhat located between Diener (“servant”) and Sklave (“slave”). The only times these versions specifically don’t use Knecht is where slavery is specifically in the focus (such as Leviticus 25:44 or Philemon 1:16).