We first meet with the term "servant" in the oft-disputed passage, Gen.
9:25-27: "Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his
brethren.... Blessed be the Lord God of Shem, and Canaan shall be his
servant." ... Now, as we have no state of servitude in the context or
the usage of the times with which to compare this, and as only Canaan
and his descendants are included in the curse, we must look to their
subsequent history for the fulfillment of the prophecy, and the kind of
servitude there implied.
We find the descendants of Canaan and their land defined in Gen.
10:15-20. They were not the Africans, as some ignorantly assert, but the
Canaanites, who dwelt in Canaan, and were there destroyed by the
Israelites, or rendered tributaries, except the Gibeonites, who were
doomed to be "hewers of wood and drawers of water," the serfs of the
temple service. Josh. 9:23, 27. There is not one word of buying and
selling _individuals_--no chattelism, or any sanction of it; there is a
performing of the service of the temple, or paying tribute, but never
slaves or chattels. Canaan thus became the servant (not slave) of Shem;
and when afterward Israel was oppressed and rendered tributary to other
nations, the Canaanites became thus not only "servants," but "servants
of servants."