Genesis 9:18-20

New English Translation

Footnotes

1. Genesis 9:18 sn The concluding disjunctive clause is parenthetical. It anticipates the following story, which explains that the Canaanites, Ham’s descendants through Canaan, were cursed because they shared the same moral abandonment that their ancestor displayed. See A. van Selms, “The Canaanites in the Book of Genesis,” OTS 12 (1958): 182-213.
2. Genesis 9:19 tn Heb “was scattered.” The rare verb נָפַץ (nafats, “to scatter”) appears to be a bi-form of the more common verb פּוּץ (puts, “to scatter”) which figures prominently in the story of the dispersion of humankind in chap. 11. And the form here, נָפְצָה (naf^etsah), could be repointed as נָפוֹצָה (nafotsah), the Niphal of פּוּץ.
3. Genesis 9:20 sn The epithet a man of the soil indicates that Noah was a farmer.
4. Genesis 9:20 tn Or “Noah, a man of the soil, was the first to plant a vineyard”; Heb “and Noah, a man of the ground, began and he planted a vineyard.”