That phrase, “A servant of servants” (which the Septuagint translation does not have, but the Hebrew reading has), signifies the lowest and basest kind of servitude. Just as Abigail, when they announced that she had been chosen by David for a wife, said: “Behold, let thy handmaid be a servant, to wash the feet of the servants of my lord.” He did not say only, says Rupert, “a servant shall he be” (by which name sometimes even a good and voluntary servitude is wont to be signified), but “a servant of servants,” by which addition the extreme servitude — nay, servile wickedness — is wont to be expressed, unless the addition “of God” be made, when by an excellent humility one professes himself the servant of the servants of God. Which title (truly a most illustrious badge of venerable humility) the Supreme Pontiffs have been wont to use. And the history of this matter was written because it would be very profitable to the Jews, for whom Moses wrote these things — namely, to strengthen their minds, that they might both hate their enemy Chanaan and least of all dread him, as one whom they understood to be cursed by God through Noah and made subject to their servitude. As if Moses said: Just as God has already done in the posterity of Cham generated from his son Mesrain (that is, in the Egyptians, whom God afflicted for your sake with various plagues, and at last drowned in the Red Sea), so also He does in the other posterity of the same Cham, begotten from his son Chanaan (that is, in the peoples of the Canaanites), against whom we now set out under God's leadership, about to obtain their land, as God promised our forefathers.²

But it is not to be left unindicated to the reader in this place, what has been prudently observed and usefully handed down to memory by the Fathers: that, just as by Adam's sin death was brought into the world, so by Cham's sin servitude was introduced into the human race — I mean that servitude which is involuntary to man, bitter, odious, finally contrary to the natural love of liberty, which is most ardent and most keen in man. For if by the word ‘servitude’ be signified any subjection whatever of one man under the power and governance of another, that kind of servitude is natural, not born of sin, but introduced by right human reason teaching it and human utility requiring it — destined to exist even in that most happy state of innocence, if it had stood.³

Let us hear Chrysostom, when he speaks of Cham's sin punished in his posterity by the penalty of servitude, writing thus: “Behold, a brother born of the same father and come forth from the same womb — sin made [him] a servant, and, liberty being taken away, imposed on him the yoke of the basest subjection, whence afterward servitude took its origin. For before, men were not wont to live so softly and to luxuriate…”⁴

…[before, men were not wont to live so softly and luxuriate,] that they should use the ministry and services of others, but each ministered to himself what was needful; and the honor of all was equal, the diversity of honors being removed from the midst. But when sin entered, it lost liberty, and corrupted the dignity given by nature, and introduced servitude — that this thing might perpetually teach and admonish man to flee the sin of servitude and to return to the liberty of virtue: from which both servant and master will take great profit, considering with themselves that from sin was born so great a difference among men, of some proudly domineering, of others on the contrary basely serving.⁵

Treating this same thing, but a little more explicitly and clearly, St. Augustine: “God, having made rational man to His own image, willed him to have dominion only over the irrational — not man over man, but man over the beast. Hence the first just men were established as shepherds of flocks rather than kings of men, that God might thus too intimate what the order of creatures demanded and what the desert of sins requires. For the condition of servitude is rightly understood to be imposed on the sinner. Accordingly, nowhere in the Scriptures do we read of a ‘servant’ before the just Noah avenged his son's sin by this word. That name, therefore, fault merited, not nature. And the origin of the word ‘servants’ in the Latin tongue is believed to be drawn from this: that those who by the law of war could justly be killed, when they were saved [servabantur] by the victors, became servants [servi], named from ‘saving’ — which itself too is not without the desert of sin. For both when a just war is waged, it is fought against an opposing sin; and every victory, even when it comes to the wicked, by divine judgment humbles the conquered, either amending sins or punishing them. The first cause of servitude, therefore, is sin, that man be subjected to man by the bond of condition — which does not happen except by God judging, with whom there is no iniquity, and who knows how to distribute diverse penalties to the merits of offenders.” Thus Augustine.⁶