Genesis 9:18-19

The Curse of Canaan

9:18 The sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. (Now Ham was the father of Canaan.) ¹  9:19 These were the sons of Noah, and from them the whole earth was populated. ² 

[9:18]  ¹ sn The concluding disjunctive clause is parenthetical. It anticipates the following story, which explains that the Canaanites, Ham’s descendants through Canaan, were cursed because they shared the same moral abandonment that their ancestor displayed. See A. van Selms, “The Canaanites in the Book of Genesis,” OTS 12 (1958): 182-213.

[9:19]  ² tn Heb “was scattered.” The verb פָּצָה (patsah, “to scatter” [Niphal, “to be scattered”]) figures prominently in story of the dispersion of humankind in chap. 11.