And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard:
Genesis stands as an inspired book pronounced divine by Christ, inseparable from the New Testament which with Christ carries all generations back to the Old Testament Scriptures as divine truth, and in that history Noah was a literal person who really lived and the flood was a real fact of history. Noah's day prefigures the present age before Christ appears in the clouds of heaven, and the character and condition of that generation mark this age, for human nature uninfluenced by the Spirit of God is the same now as then.
The verse presents Noah becoming a husbandman who planted a vineyard. The wine from that vineyard intoxicated him so that he lay uncovered in disgrace in his tent. The planting of the vineyard and the making of wine restarted corruption after the flood. As men multiplied, indulgence in wine to intoxication perverted the senses and prepared the way for excessive meat-eating and the strengthening of the animal passions. This led men to lift themselves up against God and to devote their faculties and opportunities to glorifying themselves rather than honoring their Creator, gave Satan easy access to their hearts, and repeated the indulgence of appetite and debased passion that had made the world corrupt before God destroyed it by the flood.
Noah was a man favored by God and entrusted with great responsibility, yet he was overcome by temptation and committed sin, showing that even a faithful believer could fall. Justice required the faithful narration of his fall for the benefit of all who read the sacred record. His life with its fault and folly is intended as a lesson and warning to later generations to avoid unbelief and escape wrath. The same life is intended as encouragement that through God's grace the fallen can gain fresh vigor, rise above evil nature, take heart again, conquer, and press on over obstacles. Even as men in the present strive, waver, and fall into error, that warning and encouragement remain.
The vineyard shows intemperance cursing the world almost from its infancy. By excessive use the wine so debased Noah's son that he lost all sense of propriety. Noah's disgrace tested his sons, for two saw him and with impure minds made capital of it as a pretext to resist his wise counsels, disregard his authority, severely criticize, mock and deride his misfortune, and eagerly told their brothers, while the faithful brothers with true filial love and sympathy laid a garment upon their shoulders, walked backward, and covered their father's disgrace. God rebuked the unfilial conduct with a curse that affected their posterity and has never been lifted from the descendants, and He blessed the faithful sons who honored their father with blessings remembered for good in their posterity.
The account leaves an example for all sons as long as time shall last that a son must honor his father and show tender devotion and care even when the father is overwrought, that whatever course a father pursues he is father still, and that obedience to the fifth commandment secures its valuable promised blessing.
Genesis stands as an inspired book pronounced divine by Christ, inseparable from the New Testament which with Christ carries all generations back to the Old Testament Scriptures as divine truth, and in that history Noah was a literal person who really lived and the flood was a real fact of history. Noah's day prefigures the present age before Christ appears in the clouds of heaven, and the character and condition of that generation mark this age, for human nature uninfluenced by the Spirit of God is the same now as then.
The verse presents Noah becoming a husbandman who planted a vineyard. The wine from that vineyard intoxicated him so that he lay uncovered in disgrace in his tent. The planting of the vineyard and the making of wine restarted corruption after the flood. As men multiplied, indulgence in wine to intoxication perverted the senses and prepared the way for excessive meat-eating and the strengthening of the animal passions. This led men to lift themselves up against God and to devote their faculties and opportunities to glorifying themselves rather than honoring their Creator, gave Satan easy access to their hearts, and repeated the indulgence of appetite and debased passion that had made the world corrupt before God destroyed it by the flood.
Noah was a man favored by God and entrusted with great responsibility, yet he was overcome by temptation and committed sin, showing that even a faithful believer could fall. Justice required the faithful narration of his fall for the benefit of all who read the sacred record. His life with its fault and folly is intended as a lesson and warning to later generations to avoid unbelief and escape wrath. The same life is intended as encouragement that through God's grace the fallen can gain fresh vigor, rise above evil nature, take heart again, conquer, and press on over obstacles. Even as men in the present strive, waver, and fall into error, that warning and encouragement remain.
The vineyard shows intemperance cursing the world almost from its infancy. By excessive use the wine so debased Noah's son that he lost all sense of propriety. Noah's disgrace tested his sons, for two saw him and with impure minds made capital of it as a pretext to resist his wise counsels, disregard his authority, severely criticize, mock and deride his misfortune, and eagerly told their brothers, while the faithful brothers with true filial love and sympathy laid a garment upon their shoulders, walked backward, and covered their father's disgrace. God rebuked the unfilial conduct with a curse that affected their posterity and has never been lifted from the descendants, and He blessed the faithful sons who honored their father with blessings remembered for good in their posterity.
The account leaves an example for all sons as long as time shall last that a son must honor his father and show tender devotion and care even when the father is overwrought, that whatever course a father pursues he is father still, and that obedience to the fifth commandment secures its valuable promised blessing.