The flood is over; the world's reborn, and life has God's blessing to go on. Over the past several weeks, we've heard the story of a second creation, as God restores a new world, albeit one accommodated to the crookedness of the human heart. In pagan tellings of the story, after the hero of the tale appeases the gods by his sacrifice, he gets whisked away “toward the east, over the mountains,”1 “far away, where the rivers rise.”2 Since he was thus “removed from the world of men,”3 he couldn't well headline a sequel. But in Genesis, Noah very much returns to the world; and, with a plot wide open, we have the luxury to skip ahead an untold amount of time.4 This next episode could begin right after the flood, but the action would still take “at least six years” to get underway, said some ancient readers.5 Others allowed time for a whole new generation to be born first (Genesis 9:19), maybe thirty-two grandchildren running around or grown before the story even starts.6
Whatever the jump forward, when the next verse begins, we read that “Noah began to be a man of the ground” (Genesis 9:20). Now, in the beginning, Adam was made “to serve the ground” (Genesis 2:5), and when he lost the garden, that's what he did: he was exiled “to serve the ground” from which he'd been made (Genesis 3:23). Cain was “a server of the ground” (Genesis 4:2), and God described his labor to him by saying, “You serve the ground” (Genesis 4:12). They worked at the ground, pushed their labor into the ground, wooed the ground. But Noah is a man of the ground, or you could even translate it as 'a husband of the ground.' He's wooed and won. He's become “the master of sowing and cultivating,”7 a “master of the new earth,”8 engaging the ground in a way kinglier and lovelier than Cain or even Adam had. No doubt that includes farming wheat that he and his family can grind for flour and bake for bread.9 But as the first 'husband of the ground,' he's a pioneer in a new kind of agriculture, just like his Cainite counterparts were great inventors of civilized arts and crafts (Genesis 4:20-22) or his ancestor Enosh was a pioneer in religion (Genesis 4:26).10
And so Noah “planted a vineyard” (Genesis 9:20) – he “tilled the soil with care and planted a vine with his own hand,” a biblical declaration that early Christians championed as refuting pagan myths that vineyards and their products were invented by this or that pagan god.11 Noah's invention was a truly human achievement: under the hand of God, he “devised vinedressing from the instruction implanted in his nature.”12 So far as the Bible tells it, Noah is “given credit for planting the first vineyard,”13 as “the initiator of orchard husbandry.”14 Archaeology seems to testify that the wild Eurasian grapevine was domesticated in the late Stone Age, and maybe not far from the mountains of Ararat – or, as one archaeologist put it, “the Noah Hypothesis has been confirmed.”15 In one Jewish legend, what happened was that Noah had found a vine-shoot that washed out of Eden in the flood, and, after prayer and fasting, God bade him “arise... and plant the vine,” since “for you it will be life.”16
Speaking of the Garden of Eden, if everything from the start of chapter 8 onward has been replaying the story of creation, then we'd be due for the planting of a garden right now, wouldn't we? And so it's no coincidence that here we find this vineyard in chapter 9, which – in some loose way – corresponds to the garden from chapter 2. In Genesis 2, though, “the LORD God planted a garden... in the east” (Genesis 2:8). Here, Noah “planted a vineyard” (Genesis 9:20), effectively playing God's role as planter.17 Noah aspired to “create his own version of the experience of life in the garden,”18 and so once it's grown, Noah “functioned as a new Adam,”19 indwelling “a new Garden of Eden presided over by Noah, the image of God.”20
The Bible doesn't tell us much about God growing the Garden of Eden, how long he took for that, but Noah gets no luxury of miracles here. A vineyard could be so slow to build up and mature that it was often planted with an eye to the next generation reaping most of the fruit.21 Noah “took the time and trouble to cultivate a vineyard” through years of intermittent labor, investing in it patiently, with season after season of building and pruning, waiting patiently for the first full harvest of its grapes.22
And all Noah's patient work was like a prophetic parable, to show in advance how “the Lord, having a care for the human race, established the synagogue among the Jewish people,” as one medieval monk put it.23 Isaiah pretty famously pictured Israel as the LORD's Vineyard when he sang, “My Beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill: he dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; he built a tower in the midst of it, and he hewed out a wine-vat in it” (Isaiah 5:1-2). And even Jesus echoed the same, describing God's work with Israel as that of “a master... who planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a winepress in it and built a tower” (Matthew 21:33). Noah foreshadows God's patient care for his holy nation.
But notice that, for both Isaiah and Jesus, a core element of a vineyard is a winepress – a vineyard isn't just to grow grapes as a snack, but to make wine out of. Grapes naturally carry a strain of yeast, a single-called fungus that's suitable for fermenting the grapes' own sugar and producing ethanol.24 With a little help, that natural process can be guided to function as “controlled spoilage” of the grapes, preserving them.25 At its minimum, that involves stomping the grapes out into must,26 letting it ferment, and then sealing it away from oxygen to stop bacteria from turning the ethanol into acetic acid and making vinegar.27 Noah must do that, pressing and fermenting the grapes, in the gap between verses, by verse 21 he has wine.
Some early Christians, when they read this, figured Noah “was the first to crush the fruit of the vine,”28 and so “made the first discovery of wine drinking.”29 The Bible doesn't say that for sure, and scientists like to imagine prehistoric humans gathering grapes, storing them densely enough that the weight presses those on the bottom, and finding that the juice left behind was ever so slightly alcoholic.30 Archaeologists have found wine residue from over seven thousand years ago in Georgia and northwest Iran,31 and wine is thought to have been “a central part of the life and religion of early humans in the Near East” all the way back to the late Stone Age.32
But it's fascinating that, seventeen years ago, in a cave near the Armenian village of Areni, archaeologists found a plastered area littered with grape seeds, which drained into a sixty-liter vat embedded in the cave floor. It was a Stone Age winery, the oldest one we've found so far, over six thousand years old.33 That ancient winery is less than fifty miles east of the mountain we today call Mount Ararat. It isn't close enough or simple enough to be Noah's own, but it attests to an ancient legacy of wine-making in the Ararat region; and from that general area is where the traditions of growing grapes and making wine spread throughout the biblical world.34
Remember that when Noah was born, his father Lamech prayed he might bring relief from the agonizing toil of farm labor (Genesis 5:29). A number of scholars see Noah's introduction of wine as part of his answer to that prayer,35 bringing “partial relief from the curse upon the earth that makes him sweat for his bread,”36 “comfort for humanity in the fruit of the vine,”37 making “a good way to 'come down' from the workday and block out a humdrum existence.”38 This morning, we read in a psalm where one reason why God gives growth to “plants for man to cultivate” is so that humanity “may bring forth” from the grapevine “wine to gladden the heart of man” (Psalm 104:14-15). God provides the grapevine with wine as his intention, for us to relax and enjoy it!
Used appropriately, Israel saw wine as “a God-given blessing.”39 It represents “more than mere sustenance.”40 Israel's traditions of wisdom remembered that “wine gladdens life” (Ecclesiastes 10:19) and said that “wine, from the beginning, was created for joy” (Sirach 31:27), “an important joy of everyday life.”41 No wonder King David appointed one official to oversee his kingdom's vineyards and another official to oversee the royal wine-cellars (1 Chronicles 27:27). No wonder the Bible's pictures of abundant living include “vats bursting with wine” (Proverbs 3:10), and God's promise of restoration for his people was that “they shall plant vineyards and drink their wine” (Amos 9:14), “for the enjoyment of relaxation, cheerfulness, and good spirits.”42
It's not for nothing that Israel's sacrifices to God were always accompanied by pouring out wine to him – nearly two bottles with every lamb, two and a half with every ram, almost four bottles with every bull (Numbers 15:5, 7, 10).43 Nor was it for nothing that one of Israel's biggest holidays celebrated “the produce from... their winepress” (Deuteronomy 16:13), with encouragement for them to enjoy “wine or strong drink, whatever your soul desires..., and you shall rejoice, you and your household” (Deuteronomy 14:26). It was an accepted truth in Israel that they “turned to relaxation and enjoyment... to celebrate a festivity” when they'd “indulge in wine after sacrificing.”44 And not just Israel, but anywhere in the ancient world, “celebrations of the wine harvest or the first tasting of the new wine often had overt religious expressions.”45
So ancient Jewish writers depicted Noah letting his wine age five months before, on New Year's Day, “he made a feast with rejoicing,”46 where they were “blessing the Lord of Heaven, the Most High God.”47 Then, “the wine being ready, he held a sacrifice and gave himself up to festivity,”48 so that Noah “rejoiced, and he drank some of the wine, he and his sons, with rejoicing.”49 This is a picture of celebration, of enjoyment, of delight! Thus Noah heeded the call to “eat your bread with joy and drink your wine with a merry heart” (Ecclesiastes 9:7), savoring his sabbath rest in his makeshift Garden of Eden.50
With that garden, Noah played twin roles, that of the LORD God in planting it and that of Adam in enjoying it. And in that, who else could Noah be foreshadowing but Jesus Christ, in whom the nature of the LORD God and the nature of Adam are united unconfused in a single person? As God, he planted the whole world for us; then, as man, he dwells in this world as one of us. And in this great vineyard, Jesus presents himself to us as “the True Vine” tended by his Heavenly Father (John 15:1). For how do the prophets describe grace, if not as the gift of “wine... without price” (Isaiah 55:1)? One old-time preacher urged that, in “the good things involved in our salvation,” we should “consider especially where wine has proved useful, and tremble.”51 Christ offers his saving wine to intoxicate us, to cheer us, to delight us with the joy of heaven on earth. It's through “the grain and the wine and the oil” of the Church's holy gifts that we become “radiant over the goodness of the LORD” (Jeremiah 31:12). Christ's cup is a “saving potion... for the salvation of the soul,”52 “wine that cheers God and men” (Judges 9:13), which makes our hearts rejoice in the LORD (Zechariah 10:7)!
Noah's wine was but a promise of the true wine from the True Vine, the blood not of grapes but of the God-man. One old Christian reflection on Noah's vineyard declared that “its fruit will become the blood of God, and just as the race of men have been condemned through it, so through Jesus Christ Emmanuel in it they will receive a calling and entrance into Paradise.”53 Paradise! Noah's vineyard imitated it, but Jesus leads us into a better Eden than before. And what is that, if not Holy Communion, where Christ shares with us the sweet bounties of his Paradise in bread and wine, body and blood? So come! “Wisdom has built her house..., she has mixed her wine, she has also set her table” (Proverbs 9:1-2). In this “house of wine,” our Savior's banner over us is love, all love and joy and delight (Song of Songs 2:4). Let us feast now at Wisdom's table, let us glean now from the vines of Eden, let us be cheered now by the richest wine of Christ our Savior! Hallelujah! Amen.
1 Eridu Genesis 184' (E.11), in The Context of Scripture 1:515.
2 Gilgamesh XI.205, in Sophus Helle, Gilgamesh: A New Translation of the Ancient Epic (Yale University Press, 2021), 107.
3 Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis, JPS Torah Commentary (Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 63.
4 Brian Neil Peterson, Genesis: A Pentecostal Commentary (Brill, 2022), 98.
5 Ephrem the Syrian, Commentary on Genesis 7.1, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 91:144.
6 Genesis Apocryphon: 1QapGen 12.9-13, in Daniel Machiela, The Dead Sea Genesis Apocryphon: A New Text and Translation (Brill, 2009), 55-56.
7 Ambrose of Milan, On Noah 29 §107, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 140:94.
8 Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Free Press, 2003), 203.
9 R. R. Reno, Genesis, Brazos Theological Commentary (Brazos Press, 2010), 128.
10 Bruce K. Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary (Zondervan Academic, 2001), 148; Bill T. Arnold, Genesis, New Cambridge Bible Commentary (Cambridge University Press, 2009), 112.
11 Lactantius, Divine Institutes 2.13.4, in Translated Texts for Historians 40:158; cf. Bruce K. Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary (Zondervan Academic, 2001), 147 n.88; Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Free Press, 2003), 203; Bill T. Arnold, Genesis, New Cambridge Bible Commentary (Cambridge University Press, 2009), 112; Kenneth A. Mathews, Genesis, Christian Standard Commentary (Holman Reference, 2023), 393.
12 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 29.9, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 82:205.
13 Donald E. Gowan, From Eden to Babel: A Commentary on the Book of Genesis 1-11 (Eerdmans, 1988), 108.
14 Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis, JPS Torah Commentary (Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 63.
15 Patrick E. McGovern, Ancient Wine: The Search for the Origins of Viniculture, rev. ed. (Princeton University Press, 2019), 331.
16 3 Baruch 4:15 (Slavonic), in Alexander Kulik, 3 Baruch: Greek-Slavonic Apocalypse of Baruch (De Gruyter, 2010), 188.
17 Kenneth A. Mathews, Genesis, Christian Standard Commentary (Holman Reference, 2023), 393.
18 Zvi Grumet, Genesis: From Creation to Covenant (Maggid Books, 2017), 98.
19 Joseph E. Coleson, Genesis 1-11: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition (Beacon Hill Press, 2012), 258.
20 James B. Jordan, Primeval Saints: Studies on the Patriarchs of Genesis (Canon Press, 2001), 48.
21 Natan Levy, The Dawn of Agriculture and the Earliest States in Genesis 1-11 (Routledge, 2024), 141, 157.
22 Martin Sicker, Reading Genesis Politically: An Introduction to Mosaic Political Philosophy (Praeger, 2002), 121.
23 Bede, On Genesis 9:20, in Translated Texts for Historians 48:209.
24 Ian Tattersall and Rob DeSalle, A Natural History of Wine (Yale University Press, 2015), 93-99.
25 Ian Tattersall and Rob DeSalle, A Natural History of Wine (Yale University Press, 2015), 30-31.
26 Ian Tattersall and Rob DeSalle, A Natural History of Wine (Yale University Press, 2015), 113-115.
27 Patrick E. McGovern, Ancient Wine: The Search for the Origins of Viticulture, rev. ed. (Princeton University Press, 2019), 55.
28 Theodoret of Cyrus, Questions on Genesis 56, in Library of Early Christianity 1:117.
29 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 29.6, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 82:202.
30 Patrick E. McGovern, Ancient Wine: The Search for the Origins of Viticulture, rev. ed. (Princeton University Press, 2019), 8, 321.
31 Patrick E. McGovern, Ancient Wine: The Search for the Origins of Viticulture, rev. ed. (Princeton University Press, 2019), 72-76.
32 Patrick E. McGovern, Ancient Wine: The Search for the Origins of Viticulture, rev. ed. (Princeton University Press, 2019), 304.
33 Ian Tattersall and Rob DeSalle, A Natural History of Wine (Yale University Press, 2015), 3-7; Patrick E. McGovern, Ancient Wine: The Search for the Origins of Viticulture, rev. ed. (Princeton University Press, 2019), 337.
34 Ian Tattersall and Rob DeSalle, A Natural History of Wine (Yale University Press, 2015), 10; Patrick E. McGovern, Ancient Wine: The Search for the Origins of Viticulture, rev. ed. (Princeton University Press, 2019), 148, 338-340.
35 Bruce K. Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary (Zondervan Academic, 2001), 147; John Day, From Creation to Babel: Studies in Genesis 1-11 (Bloomsbury Academic, 2013), 148; Iain Provan, Discovering Genesis: Content, Interpretation, Reception (Eerdmans, 2016), 134; James Chukwuma Okoye, Genesis 1-11: A Narrative-Theological Commentary (Cascade Books, 2018), 113.
36 Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Free Press, 2003), 203.
37 Peter J. Harland, The Value of Human Life: A Study of the Story of the Flood (Genesis 6-9) (Brill, 1996), 117.
38 Patrick E. McGovern, Ancient Wine: The Search for the Origins of Viticulture, rev. ed. (Princeton University Press, 2019), 303.
39 Ian Tattersall and Rob DeSalle, A Natural History of Wine (Yale University Press, 2015), 17.
40 Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Free Press, 2003), 203.
41 John Goldingay, Genesis (Baker Academic, 2020), 168.
42 Philo of Alexandria, On Noah's Work as a Planter 40 §166, in Loeb Classical Library 247:299.
43 Patrick E. McGovern, Ancient Wine: The Search for the Origins of Viticulture, rev. ed. (Princeton University Press, 2019), 231.
44 Philo of Alexandria, On Noah's Work kas a Planter 39 §§162-163, in Loeb Classical Library 247:297-299.
45 Patrick E. McGovern, Ancient Wine: The Search for the Origins of Viticulture, rev. ed. (Princeton University Press, 2019), 76.
46 Jubilees 7:1-3, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 2:68-69.
47 Genesis Apocryphon: 1QapGen 12.13-17, in Daniel Machiela, The Dead Sea Genesis Apocryphon: A New Text and Translation (Brill, 2009), 56.
48 Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 1.140, in Loeb Classical Library 242:69.
49 Jubilees 7:6, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 2:69.
50 James B. Jordan, Primeval Saints: Studies on the Patriarchs of Genesis (Canon Press, 2001), 48.
51 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 29.10, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 82:205.
52 Clement of Alexandria, Paedagogus 1.1 §15, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 23:16.
53 3 Baruch 4:15 (Greek), in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 1:669.
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