“And he called his name Noah, saying: ‘This same shall comfort [Heb. yenachameinu] us in our work and in the toil of our hands, which cometh from the ground which the LORD hath cursed.’ ”

Noach relieves people of God’s curse on the land that we would eat bread by the sweat of our brow and the land would no longer bend its will towards mankind. The connection of Noah to the plow is a huge theological point – God’s curses and blessings are not some mystical supernatural law, they play out in the real, physical world. Noah the inventor relieves God’s curse, not just Noah the pious.

I would note, however, that most traditional sources view Noah’s appelation Ish Ha’adamah, man of the earth, as a negative one relative to his pre-flood status of ish tzaddik tamim, a perfectly righteous man.