Noah's Ark

Noah's Ark is the vessel God commanded Noah to build before the Flood, as the book of Genesis tells it (Genesis 6:14-17). God told Noah that the end of all living creatures had come and that He would bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy every creature with the breath of life (Genesis 6:13, 6:17). But He would establish His covenant with Noah, who was to enter the ark with his wife, his sons and his sons' wives, and to bring in two of every living creature, male and female, to keep them alive (Genesis 6:18-19). Noah did everything just as God had commanded him (Genesis 6:22).

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Construction

The ark was to be built of gopher wood, with rooms, and coated with pitch inside and out (Genesis 6:14). It was to measure 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide and 30 cubits high (Genesis 6:15). It was to have a roof, walls finished a cubit from the top, a door in its side, and lower, middle and upper decks (Genesis 6:16). The account later mentions a window Noah had made in the ark and a covering that he removed from it (Genesis 8:6, 8:13).

The Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible notes that the word for gopher wood is found nowhere but Genesis 6:14 and has not been identified with certainty; it suggests a resinous wood such as a conifer, or cypress, often chosen for building ships, and judges the meaning still doubtful. Zondervan's article on the ark adds that the wood has sometimes been rendered “pine” but more often “cypress,” a material that resists decay. The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia thought the wood very likely the cypress the Phoenicians used widely in shipbuilding, and rendered the ark's compartments as “rooms or nests” and its pitch as bitumen.

The length of the cubit is not known for certain: the Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible says it is commonly taken as eighteen inches and also works with cubits of 17.5 and 22.5 inches, while the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, using Petrie's estimate of 22.5 inches, put the ark's length at 562½ feet. Zondervan's encyclopedia observes that the text says nothing of the ark's shape, and pictures it simply as a craft that floated, without propulsion or steering.

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Those aboard

Two of every kind of bird, animal and crawling creature were to come to Noah to be kept alive, and he was to gather every kind of food for his family and the animals (Genesis 6:20-21). A later command specified seven pairs of every kind of clean animal and of every kind of bird, and a pair of every kind of unclean animal (Genesis 7:2-3). Noah entered the ark with his wife, his sons Shem, Ham and Japheth, and his sons' three wives, and the animals came to him two by two, male and female (Genesis 7:13-16). When all had entered, “the LORD shut him in” (Genesis 7:16).

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The Flood and the landing

The floodwaters came when Noah was 600 years old, on the seventeenth day of the second month (Genesis 7:6, 7:11). Rain fell for forty days and forty nights, and the rising waters lifted the ark high above the earth so that it floated on their surface (Genesis 7:12, 7:17-18). The waters prevailed on the earth for 150 days, and only Noah and those with him in the ark remained (Genesis 7:23-24). On the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat (Genesis 8:4). The tops of the mountains became visible on the first day of the tenth month (Genesis 8:5). After forty days Noah opened the window and sent out a raven, and then a dove, which came back the second time with a freshly plucked olive leaf and did not return the third time (Genesis 8:6-12). In Noah's six hundred and first year, on the first day of the first month, he removed the covering and saw that the ground was dry, and by the twenty-seventh day of the second month the earth was fully dry (Genesis 8:13-14). At God's command Noah came out with his wife, his sons and their wives, and every living creature came out of the ark, kind by kind (Genesis 8:15-19).

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The word for the ark

According to Spoelstra, the Hebrew term for the ark is used for the vessels of Noah and of Moses and in no other context in the Hebrew Bible, not even for the Ark of the Covenant. The Jewish Encyclopedia identifies Moses' vessel as the chest in which he was placed as an infant on the bank of the Nile. Zondervan's encyclopedia glosses the word as a chest, box or boat, a vessel made to float. Spoelstra describes it as a loanword, not native to Hebrew.

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Ancient Near Eastern parallels

The British Museum's Flood Tablet, the eleventh tablet of the Epic of Gilgamesh, tells of Utnapishtim, who, like Noah, was warned in advance that the gods planned to send a great flood. In the British Museum's description, Utnapishtim built a boat, filled it with his valuables, his relatives, domestic and wild animals and craftsmen of every kind, and survived six days of flood before coming to land on a mountain called Nimush. Spoelstra notes that Utnapishtim's vessel is called an elippu, “ship, boat”.

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The ark and baptism

The water through which, in the ark, “only eight souls, were saved” points forward to baptism: “this water symbolizes the baptism that now saves you also” (1 Peter 3:20-21).