The early chapters of Torah are aetiological tales — stories of how things came to be as they are. They tell us about the evolution of the individual human psyche, but also provide hints which illuminate the technological evolution of the human species.

After the expulsion from Eden, humans and land were both cursed. Life would henceforward be very much harder. People would have to perform agricultural labour to get food to survive.

Several generations on, Noah’s father names him hopefully, invoking the idea of comfort or relief: “This one will provide us relief (yenachamenu) from our work and from the toil of our hands, out of the very soil which the Lord placed under a curse” (Genesis 5:29).

This has resulted in some commentaries imagining Noah as a technological innovator, moving agriculture along from the hoe to the plough which made growing food a little easier. But this idea isn’t there in the biblical text. And there’s actually a much more obvious way in which Noah made life a little sweeter.

Reading our verse carefully, it’s obvious that Noah’s actual innovation is viniculture — the systematic cultivation of grapes for wine. Intoxicants are very ancient human technologies which form part of the story of our evolution, but which are also of course, dangerous in excess. When we read the story of Noah growing vines, getting drunk, and disgracing himself, we might miss the aetiological account also supplied here.

The way in which Noah is first introduced to us links him to a list of ancestral patrons in Genesis 4:20-22, which names the inventors of animal husbandry, musical instruments and copper and iron tools.

Leaving aside the Flood story, Noah is also important as one of these innovators and it is here that we see him living up to his father’s blessing as someone who provided humans with comfort from “our work and the toil of 
our hands”.