Genesis 9:20

And Noah began to be an husbandman,.... Or "a man of the earth" (c), 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;

And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard: And Noah began to be an husbandman - literally, And Noah began a man of the ground.

i.e. Was a husbandman, as he had been before. The verb to begin doth oft abound, and is applied to him that continueth or repeateth an action begun before. Thus Christ is said to begin to cast out, , and to begin to speak, ; for which in the parallel places he is said only to cast out, , and to speak, .

Genesis 9:20 And Noah began [to be] an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard:Ver. 20. And Noah began to be a husbandman.] Veteres si quem virum, bonum colonum appellassent, amplissime laudasse existimabant. Cic. Nunquam vilior erat annona Romae, referente Plinio, quam cum terram colerent iidem qui Remp. regerent; quasi gauderet terra laureato vomere, scilicet, et Aratore triumphali. See 2 Chronicles 26:10. And he planted a vineyard.] Hence Berosus and the poets call him Janus Oenotrius. Janus, of the Hebrew, iajin, vinum; and Oenotrius of ïéíïò, whence our English word wine.

(20, 21) Noah began to be an husbandman.—Rather, Noah, being a husbandman (Heb., a man of the adâmâh), began to plant a vineyard. Noah had always been a husbandman: it was the cultivation of the vine, still abundant in Armenia, that was new. Scarcely aware, perhaps, of the intoxicating qualities of the juice which he had allowed to ferment, he drank to excess, and became the first example of the shameful effects of intemperance.

Verse 20. Noah began to be a husbandman] איש האדמה ish haadamah, A man of the ground, a farmer; by his beginning to be a husbandman we are to understand his recommencing his agricultural operations, which undoubtedly he had carried on for six hundred years before, but this had been interrupted by the flood. And the transaction here mentioned might have occurred many years posterior to the deluge, even after Canaan was born and grown up, for the date of it is not fixed in the text. The word husband first occurs here, and scarcely appears proper, because it is always applied to man in his married state, as wife is to the woman. The etymology of the term will at once show its propriety when applied to the head of a family. Husband, [A.S. husband], is Anglo-Saxon, and simply signifies the bond of the house or family; as by him the family is formed, united, and bound together, which, on his death, is disunited and scattered. It is on this etymology of the word that we can account for the farmers and petty landholders being called so early as the twelfth century, husbandi, as appears in a statute of David II., king of Scotland: we may therefore safely derive the word from [A.S. hus], a house, and [A.S. bond] from [A.S. binben], to bind or tie; and this etymology appears plainer in the orthography which prevailed in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, in which I have often found the word written house-bond; so it is in a MS. Bible before me, written in the fourteenth century. Junius disputes this etymology, but I think on no just ground.

20. And Noah began to be an husbandman] This expression is an extremely awkward rendering of the strange Hebrew, which is literally “And Noah began man of the soil and planted,” &c. Better, “And Noah the husbandman began and planted a vineyard,” i.e. was the first to do so. “The husbandman,” lit. “man of the soil,” LXX ἄνθρωποςγεωργὸςγῆς. This description of Noah introduces him in a new capacity. The present section seems to be taken from a distinct tradition concerning the primaeval time, in which Noah appears as the founder of agriculture and of vine cultivation.

20. Began to be a husbandman — Or, Noah began to be a man of the soil, and he planted a vineyard.