Noah Built One Too

Why the Ark is not so much a boat as it is an example to follow in prioritizing God's presence

One of the most fascinating features about the Bible is the way in which different themes are woven into seemingly (to us as modern readers anyway) unrelated stories all throughout both the Old and New Testaments. This past Sunday, we looked at one of the most important themes in all of Scripture—the Temple—and the practical implications of finding it in such an odd place in the biblical narrative as the flood story. Specifically, we saw that Noah’s Ark is either the least practical boat of all time, or it is actually a temple-like structure. But how, in just the three verses of Genesis 6:14–16 (and a few others here and there), does the Bible show us this?

First of all, as we’ve already seen, that word “show” is important. The Bible loves to communicate through images, scenes, playing on different words and ideas, and by leaving a trail of breadcrumbs where we’d least expect it, forcing the reader to really sit with and engage with these stories in order to connect the dots. Put simply, the Bible often shows without telling.

Here are the amazing connections that the Bible gives us between Noah’s Ark and the Temple, showing us that the Ark is less of a practical solution to a problem and more of a powerful example for us to follow about making space for God’s presence in our lives:

1. We first need to notice that God never tells Noah to build a “boat.” If you wanted a boat, wouldn’t you ask for one? Neither does anyone else in the story call the Ark a boat. Because it’s just that: an “ark.” What’s more, the Ark doesn’t really have any boat features, even those that are absolutely essential to your typical boat. No rudder, no keel, no oars. And the Ark’s shape? Just a giant box, almost certainly flat on all sides. When have you ever seen a boat like this? Or here's a better question: if you had never heard this story before, would you ever conclude that God is talking about a boat?
   
   
2. The Ark has three distinct sections: an upper, a middle, and a lower deck. The Tabernacle and Temple have three main sections as well: an outer courtyard, the Holy Place, and the Holy of Holies. And when Solomon builds the Temple in 1 Kings 6, verse 5 tells us that he added another structure surrounding the building…with three separate floors.
   
   
3. Both the Ark and the Temple are measured in cubits, and they are exactly the same height and width.
   
   
4. God tells Noah to build a giant door on the side of the Ark, another strange feature to find on a boat, especially one that is supposed to protect those inside of it from a worldwide flood. And this raises two interesting questions: if the Ark is a box, which side is “the side” the door is supposed to go in, and why are there no instructions about how to seal it? These instructions don’t appear to be especially interested in practicality, so what if we looked instead for a connection in the wording? Looking again to 1 Kings 6, Solomon’s Temple also has a side door. Now, that door does have a specific location: it’s on the right/south side (verse 8). The fact that the door in Noah’s Ark is mentioned without any concern for specifying which side it’s supposed to be built into suggests it was added as an intentional connection to the Temple simply by the language used to describe it.
   
   
5. We’ve already mentioned that the thing God commands Noah to build is not a “boat,” but an “ark.” So there's already a hint that an ark is not the same thing as a boat. But what is it? Or, to the earlier question of whether we would ever think Noah's Ark was a boat if we had never heard this story before, what would the first hearers of Genesis have imagined when they heard this word "ark"? If we looked at the Hebrew Bible, we would see that the word we translate as "ark" only appears in two stories: here and in the story of Moses (Exodus 2:1–10). What word is that? It’s actually what’s called a “loanword”; instead of using a distinctively Hebrew word, this word is borrowed from the Egyptians. A great example of a loanword is our English word “baptize.” It looks kind of like the Greek word βαπτίζω, doesn’t it? Something similar is going on in the Noah and Moses stories. The word the Bible has borrowed is the word tevah. In the Moses story, baby Moses is placed in a tevah, and this tevah saves him from drowning in the Nile River…kind of like how Noah’s tevah saves him from drowning in the flood (and notice that both Noah’s tevah and the tevah Moses is placed in are coated with a material called “pitch”—more on this word at the end). Isn’t it interesting that apart from the Noah story, the only other place we find the word tevah is in a story about Moses, the guy who ends up building the Tabernacle, a portable precursor to the Temple? And that’s not even the half of it. While the word tevah can simply mean “box” or “basket,” Hebrew slaves living in Egypt for 400 years (remember that the Israelites had just made it out of Egypt when Moses receives Genesis through Deuteronomy) would have become familiar with an even more important cultural/religious use of this word: “holy shrine.” One of the meanings of the word “shrine” is “a place of worship” or “a sanctuary.” And on top of that, in Egyptian religious life, these tevah’s were placed in temples, and sometimes, during festivals, even floated down the Nile River from one temple-town to the next. In other words, the word tevah (or “ark” as we’re used to reading it) is loaded with connections to the idea of a temple. The Bible here is powerfully making use of a very familiar word in Egyptian religious life, taking it over for God’s own purposes and giving it new meaning. And when a tired nation of wandering Israelites heard this word in Noah’s story, this must have caused them to look forward to the day when the One True God would have a Temple of His own.
   
   
6. The Bible describes Noah and Moses in very similar ways—too similar to be coincidence: they are both described as having found favor in the eyes of the Lord (Genesis 6:8; Exodus 33:17); they are both commanded to collect food to keep inside the project they are building (Genesis 6:21; Hebrews 9:4); and when their projects are completed, they are both said to have done “everything just as God/the Lord commanded” (Genesis 6:22; Exodus 40:16).
   
   
7. The first thing Noah does after the flood is over is build the first altar ever recorded (Cain and Abel made sacrifices, but the word “altar” is never explicitly mentioned in that story) and offer a huge burnt offering to the Lord (Genesis 8:20). In other words, Noah is acting like a priest managing a temple.
   
   
8. When the flood is over, the Ark comes to "rest" (that oh-so-important word that we already saw alludes to God's temple presence in creation in our post on Genesis 1) on top of a mountain (Genesis 8:4). In the ancient world, people thought the higher you got up to the sky, the closer you were getting to heaven where God was, and so mountains were seen as the ideal holy ground to build a Temple. The Temple, where God would come to rest, was built on a mountain in Jerusalem, just as Noah’s Ark came to rest on a mountain.
   
   
9. And here are a couple of bonuses in addition to what we saw last Sunday. It would be very convenient if the word for Noah’s “Ark” was the same as that used for the “Ark” of the Covenant, but we already saw that tevah is used only in the flood story and in the story of baby Moses on the Nile, so that can’t be. But there is still a connection with the Ark of the Covenant, and even with the idea of atonement itself (it was in the Temple that the rituals of the Day of Atonement took place). I’m going to show you a few words side-by-side (it's okay if the Hebrew letters are unfamiliar—just notice their shapes!):
   
   “ransom” (כפר)
   “to atone” (כפר)
   “atonement cover” (כפרת)
   “pitch” (כפר)
   
   Do you notice that all of these words are spelled with the same Hebrew letters “כ-פ-ר”? Now focus especially on the last two words we just looked at. The Ark of the Covenant is to be built with the “atonement cover” (כפרת) on top of it (Exodus 25:17). One of the materials used to build Noah’s Ark is “pitch” (כפר; Genesis 6:14). Remember what we said at the beginning about how the Bible loves to paint pictures with wordplay? This is especially true in Hebrew writings, and here the situation is no different. The studious reader would notice that the same letters used to spell one of the materials that Noah built his Ark with were also used in the spelling of one of the most important aspects of Israel’s Temple, and this would have been yet another signpost indicating what the Bible is trying to show us.
   
   
10. We never mentioned what Noah's name means. It means "rest." So a guy whose name means "rest" is commanded by God to build a resting place, an ordered space for His presence to be with Noah while the world comes crashing down around him. Because where you rest determines how you rest, and because order leads to God's presence, just as God's presence leads to order in our lives.

Have any questions? Shoot me an email!

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