Confronting A Destroyed World

The door of the ark opens to a new world. Noach emerges with his family. God makes a covenant with Man, promising that he will never wreak such destruction upon the world again. The rainbow in the sky symbolises a new period of harmony and revival. Then this happens:

וַיָּ֥חֶל נֹ֖חַ – Noach, the man of the soil, began(?) and planted a vineyard. He drank from the wine and became intoxicated, and he uncovered himself in his tent. (Bereshit 9:20-21)

His children reacted differently. One gleefully gossiped about it, and two respectfully covered him without looking at him demeaned and unclothed. Noach returned to consciousness and cursed and blessed them respectively. This is the last we hear from Noach. A sad and unedifying end to one of the Torah’s great stories.

What went wrong? To understand this story, we must look at three different elements of it:

First, why a vineyard? Wine leads to the unfortunate end of this story. The Midrash [1] asks this question lacing it with criticism: “Should he not have planted something else, (something) that was constructive…Instead, “he planted a vineyard!”.

Second, the first word of this story “ויחל” is ambiguous. Rashi[2] echoes the very same Midrash, linking it to the word “חולין”, meaning “secular” or “profane”. This connects the use of this word to the expressed disappointment in Noach. The vineyard tainted him. Yet, it can be translated differently: Ramban[3] and others relate it to the word “התחלה”, in English: “beginning”. Noach began his resettlement of the world by planting a vineyard. This reading is certainly less loaded. Yet both readings legitimately arise from the text.

Third, the description of Noach as an “איש האדמה – the man of the soil” sounds disapproving. The aforementioned Midrash explains it as referring to Noach being “overenthusiastic” about the soil. When contrasted with the description given to Noach at the beginning of the parasha – “איש צדיק-a righteous man” (Bereshit 6:9) – it certainly sounds so. However, there are more positive connotations to the expression. Indeed, the same Midrash goes on to suggest multiple reasons:

“Man of the soil”: he remade the surface of the soil, because of him the soil was watered, he filled the entire surface of the soil.

Noach was the first to cultivate the soil of the new world and the patriarch of all its people. These explanations are certainly less critical. Yet all these explanations seem to legitimately arise from the text.

New light can be shed on this troubling episode by careful examination of another story. One which seems far too long. The Torah describes that the ark came to rest on the Ararat Mountains (Bereishit 8:4) when the rain stopped. It then spends over 170 words, almost as long as it spent narrating the entire flood, describing with seemingly excessive detail the long string of minor events which took place until Noach eventually left the ark. When doing so it uses a familiar expression:

וַיָּ֣חֶל -He waited another seven days, and again sent out the dove from the ark. The dove came back to him towards evening, and there in its bill was a plucked-off olive leaf! Then Noach knew that the waters had decreased on the earth. וַיִּיָּ֣חֶל -He waited another seven days and sent the dove and it did not return to him anymore. And it was in the six hundred and first year, in the first month, on the first of the month, the waters dried from the earth; Noach removed the covering of the ark, and he saw that the surface of the ground was dry. And in the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth was dry. God spoke to Noach, saying, “Come out of the ark, together with your wife, your sons, and your sons’ wives. (Bereshit 8:4-16)

Only after seven months, four birds and ultimately a Divine Command, Noach leaves the ark. It does not sound like he wanted to. Why did he wait? Fascinatingly, the word וַיָּ֣חֶל is used, the same word that was used when Noach planted a vineyard, but with a different meaning. Here it means “he waited”. Why? The oft-painted image of Noach emerging from the ark to a beautiful, serene and silent world with a rainbow in the sky is misleading. The world was silent, but there was no beauty to its silence. It was the screaming silence of death and destruction. Everything had died, there was nothing left to hear. This was the world into which Noach was hesitant to enter.

The use of the same word in both stories is deliberate. What held Noach back from leaving the ark is what led him to plant a vineyard. Every crisis generates one of three responses: confront, freeze or escape. “Wine gladdens the heart of man”[4], it provides an escape. But it never actually works, it blinds you from the challenges you face, it does not make them disappear. The wine made Noach not see what he did not want to see, and made others see what he did not want them to see.

These stories become ever more profound when we look at the very first story of Noach. The Torah tells us of Noach’s birth and his father’s choice of the very name “Noach”:

He named him Noach, saying, “This one will provide us relief from our work and from the toil of our hands, from the soil which God cursed.” (Bereishit 5:29)

Noach (taken from the Hebrew root of “rest” or “respite”) was named thusly, in aspiration that he would confront and fix the crisis of his day. The earth had been cursed. Providing bread was a backbreaking, constant struggle. According to the Midrash[5], these aspirations were realised. Noach was the innovator of the first plough. This allowed grain to be harvested more easily and in far greater quantities.

This gives new meaning to the description of Noach as “איש האדמה-the man of the earth”. He was “The Man of the Earth”. He had revolutionized working the ground. His plough had made the earth more livable. Perhaps, after the flood, he could have been the man to meet the next crisis?

The Torah, by describing him as the “איש האדמה-the man of the soil”, is giving him dampened praise while voicing disappointment. Noach may not have faced this later crisis with the same innovation and positivity that he faced the first one. He was an “איש האדמה-the man of the soil”, in both senses of the word. Planting a vineyard was disappointing from “The Man of the Soil”, but he was still “The Man of the Soil”. Or perhaps, planting a vineyard was disappointing because he was “The Man of the Soil”. Always confront, never run.

[1] Bereishit Rabbah 36:3

[2] Bereishit 9:20

[3] Bereishit 9:20

[4] Tehilim 104:15

[5] Bereishit Rabba 25:1