Genesis 9:26

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" (אהלי שם for אלהי שם), 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.