182 JA3TR0W — THE HAMITES AND SEMITES. [Aprill, 



" Bless, O Jahweh, the tents of Shem," 



we find in the next verse the hope expressed that Japheth " may 

 dwell in the tents of Shem." Whatever else may be meant by this 

 phrase, it certainly points to a close association of Japheth with 

 Shem. The phrase is intelligible only on the supposition that 

 Shem and Japheth represent two subdivisions of some larger unit in 

 alliance against a common enemy, Canaan ; the three — Shem, 

 Japheth and Canaan — so far from representing the nations of the 

 known world, would thus turn out to be originally designations for 

 tribes or clans dividing between them a comparatively restricted 

 strip of territory. Canaan is of course a perfectly definite geogra- 

 phical and ethnic term, and if he is to be the servant of Shem and 

 Japheth, it can only be because he has been or is to be reduced to 

 servitude and subjection in his own land, and if Shem and Japheth 

 are the subjectors they too must belong to the district in which 

 Canaan lies. Shem in the combination stands for the Hebrews 

 as conquerors of Canaan and whatever may have been meant by 

 Japheth — presumably some allies of the Hebrews — the Japheth in- 

 troduced into the poetical fragment of Noah's curse is totally 

 different from the Japheth who appears in the loth chapter in P as 

 the ancestor of the '' distant " nations or groups. 



The later stratum of J no longer knows the subdivisions Shem, 

 Japheth and Canaan. Ham has taken the place of the latter and 

 in order to reconcile the contradiction between the older poem and 

 the later story of Ham's conduct towards his father, the gloss is 

 added in verse i8 ''and Ham is the father of Canaan " and again 

 in verse 22 the words '* father of Canaan " after Ham's name.^ 

 The story and the poem do not appear to have originally stood in 

 any connection with each other, the latter being here introduced 

 merely as an appropriate climax, just as elsewhere in the Old Testa- 

 ment we find snatches of old poems attached to later narratives 



" bless " (imperative) and the change of e/o/ie Shem " God of Shem " to ^ Ohole 

 5//^w "tents of Shem." Budde {Urgeschickte,^. 73) proposes to read b^nik/i 

 and to omit elo/ie so that the section would read 



« Blessed of Jahweh is Shem." . 



The objection to this view (though preferred by Holzinger, /, c, p. 90) is 

 the omission of a word vs^hose prt sence must be accounted for. 



1 This view seems to me more satisfactory than to regard •' Ham the father " 

 as the gloss which, to be sure, would make Canaan the chief actor as in the 

 original form of the story was the case. 



