Genesis 9:20

20 And Noah began to be an husbandman*, and he planted a vineyard:

Genesis 9:20 Meaning and Commentary

Genesis 9:20

And Noah began to be an husbandman
Or "a man of the earth" ^F3, not lord of it, as Jarchi, though he was, but a tiller of the earth, as he had been before the flood, and now began to be again; he returned to his old employment, and which perhaps he improved, having invented, as the Jews ^F4 say, instruments of husbandry; it may be, the use of the plough, which made the tillage of the ground more easy; he was expert in husbandry, as Aben Ezra observes, and which, as he remarks, is great wisdom; and though he was so great a man, yet he employed himself in this way: and he planted a vineyard;
not vines, but a vineyard; there were vines before scattered up and down, here one and there another, but he planted a number of them together, and set them in order, as the Jewish writers say ^F5; and some of them ^F6 will have it that he found a vine which the flood brought out of the garden of Eden, and planted it; but this is mere fable: where this plantation was cannot be said with certainty; the Armenians have a tradition that Noah, after quitting the ark, went and settled at Erivan, about twelve leagues from Ararat, a city full of vineyards; and that it was there he planted the vineyard, in a place where they still make excellent wine, and that their vines are of the same sort he planted there ^F7; which contradicts what Strabo ^F8 says of the country of Armenia, its hills and plains, that a vine will not easily grow there.

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FOOTNOTES:

F3 (hmdah vya) "vir terrie", Montanus.
F4 Zohar, apud Hottinger, Smegma Oriental. p. 253.
F5 Ben Melech in loc. so Abarbinel & Bechai, apud Muis, in loc.
F6 Targum Jon. in loc. Pirke Eliezer, c. 23.
F7 See Tournefort's Voyage to the Levant, vol. 3. p. 178. Universal History, vol. 1. p. 261.
F8 Geograph. l. 11. p. 363.

Genesis 9:20 In-Context

18 And the sons of Noah, that went forth of the ark, were Shem, and Ham, and Japheth: and Ham is the father of Canaan.

19 These are the three sons of Noah: and of them was the whole earth overspread.

20 And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard:

21 And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent.

22 And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without.