"The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. And God looked upon the earth, and behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and behold, I will destroy them with the earth. Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch. And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of: the length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits. A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof; with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it. And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and everything that is in the earth shall die." (Genesis 6:11-17)
To this point, the earth had still been watered by a mist. There was no such thing as rain, and certainly not a deluge of rain that would bring about the flood God is describing. Thus Noah, obediently building the ark in preparation for something he had never witnessed before, demonstrates to us faith; confidence that what God says is going to happen will indeed happen. I don't think a person can truly "walk with God" without such faith; complete confidence and trust must be part of a true deep relationship, or the relationship remains surface-level only, an illusion of a relationship, without faith. Here is something to check in our own hearts: are we truly "walking with God" or only casting an illusion? Noah was found faithful to God and was accounted righteous because of his faith.
Theoretically a cubit is the length of your arm from the tip of the middle finger to your elbow, somewhere between 14 and 25 inches depending upon the size of the person. Since the length of the ark is to be 300 cubits, if I multiply that by a median number of about 19, it seems the ark would be 475 feet long, possibly even longer. And by those same calculations the height would be 47 feet or so. What an endeavor this was for Noah! And just think of how long it must have taken for him (even with the help of his sons) to build such a thing without all the modern equipment such as we have today! And it contained three levels. This might have been considered the first cruise ship in existence, except for the terrible views from the ship of the destruction of what might have been millions of people at that time (as scholars believe to be possible given the extremely long life-spans) along with an endless number of animals and all that was upon the earth. How horrible it must have been for Noah to know, as the days grew closer to completing the ark, that so many would die needlessly…needlessly not because God destroyed them, but because they would not repent. For there is too much biblical evidence that God would have been merciful had they just turned to Him with repentant hearts.
The window (if it were a window as we know it) would have only been approximately 19 inches in height…and with all those animals inside the ark! But scholars believe the window was something like a high transom or eave that ran the full length of the ark; so that even though it was only a foot and a half high it was long enough to provide a sufficient "airing out" of the ark.
We should take note of the fact that God had Noah do a rather odd thing. It would be typical to "pitch" (seal with tar) the outside of a boat to make it waterproof; but why would God instruct Noah to also pitch the inside of the boat? Perhaps it was because of the animals that were about to board the boat. Perhaps, however, it was so that the ark would be preserved, so much so that thousands of years later it would be discovered still intact; but for what purpose? Well, the ark, as it was being built by Noah for however many years it took to complete, became a testimony to an unbelieving world of a coming judgment. Perhaps God "preserved" it so well so that at a later date it would again become a testimony to an unbelieving world of a second (and final) judgment.
There has been much speculation about where the ark landed: the bible says (Genesis 8:4) that it rested "upon the mountains of Ararat." If you do a search within Wikipedia titled "Searches for Noah's Ark" you will find a quite long list of the various attempts made to find the ark. There is a mountain named Mount Ararat located in Northern Iraq. The mountain is 16,854 feet high and satellite images indicate an extreme amount of glacial-looking ice. Traditions of Josephus (Jewish historian) and others near his time, record that the "mountains of Ararat" are in what is now known as Eastern Anatolia in Turkey. Turkey continues to prohibit search expeditions into these mountains, I believe, on the basis of not wanting to disturb the relics of the ark that are there. Regardless, there appears to be no confirmed evidence yet that the ark is in those mountains or in the mountain in Iraq. But that is not to say that it isn't or that in God's timing, it won't be discovered. Will its discovery finally bring people to acknowledge Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior? Possibly, but even with all the miracles that Jesus did while He walked on this earth, there were only a few who believed in Him (5,000 were fed at one time by the miracle of the fish and loaves, yet how many were with Him at the cross?) And it was left to those few, that remnant, empowered by the Holy Spirit, to spread the Good News to others.
I believe that the same wickedness that afflicted the people of Noah's time, is the same wickedness that afflicts the world at large today. But the bible tells us that the second judgment will be far worse than the first, for those who have not received the Good News of God's Word: that we can be reconciled to God through Jesus Christ.
For those who trust in Jesus, the ark will not be found to be a symbol of judgment, but a symbol of salvation: rescuing us from God's wrath which will be poured out one final time onto an unbelieving and sinful world.
3 comments:
Obviously, God knew Noah and his family, and the animals he told Noah to bring aboard would be the only ones saved. Otherwise, the dimensions of the ark would have been bigger, to hold more people, etc. You are right, the only way the other people could have been saved would have been to repent and with that, God would have held back the waters and saved the Earth and the people. But, he knew their hearts were hardened and they were corrupted. Is the world much different today? It seems the "salt" of the Earth is becoming less and less and the Earth is losing its flavor.
Fascinating comments about the pitch inside the ark. I have never thought about that aspect of it -- preserving the ark as a testament to the world. Good thought!
I have always thought of it as being something to keep the ship "water-tight," preventing leaks during the 364 - 370 days at sea (he was in the ark 7 more days as he was told to enter the ark 7 days prior to the flood).
Maybe another reason for the pitch was to keep out the noise. Noise from the storm (as a storm to flood the entire surface of the world must have raged on and on and could have driven someone possible insane to have heard the stead pounding of rain on the top of the ark day in and day out). The thunder and lightning...what a demonstration of God's majestic power that must have been (in light of the obvious purpose of course). Finally, maybe the pitch was God's way to spare Noah's family from hearing the cries from all of the people's screams and pleas for help. As you can imagine, many must have survived for days after the rains began.
Here's a question, What happened to the bodies of the dead? There were no animals to remove the remains. Do you think the bodies just went to the bottom of what is now know as the sea? God "covered" them up? The rain an emotional demonstration of God's emotions in destroying his creation. The rain as being symbolic tears? GW
I have another question for you: what happened to all the sea life: sharks, whales, fish, etc? Those animals were created in Genesis 1 to live in the oceans that were already in existence. Now the entire earth is about to become an ocean. Did animals who thrive in water, now die in the water? God said He was going to destroy everything, but He didn't take twos of the fish from what we can gather as there is no mention of fish being taken aboard the ark. Is this because He knew they would survive somehow? And if there are sharks in the ocean at that time, even early on when the rains were still coming, perhaps they were the clean-up crew. Then again, the flood waters remain for 150 days...how decomposed would the bodies be after 150 days. That's all I can contribute to what might have happened to the corpses of the wicked. As far as the rain being symbolic of God's grief, His Word is symbolic on many more levels than we are capable of understanding, so "tears" is possible. What also is possible is that the waters are prophetically symbolic of the "washing away" of sin that will be done for ALL by the blood of Jesus Christ. Good comments!
Actually, as we get into Chapter 7 of Genesis, we will see what happens to the fish of the sea. The Bible is very specific that all flesh who breathed upon "dry" land perished in the flood. I think that answers a lot of questions for us.
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