Noah's Ark. The precise meaning of the Hebrew ■word (nnp, tL'bah') is uncertain. The word onh' occurs here and in the second chapter of Exodus, where it is used of the little papyrus boat in which tlie mother of Moses intrusted her child to the Nile. In all probabil- ity it is to the old Egyptian that we are to look for its original form. Bunscn, in his vocabulary (^Egypt's Place, i, 482), gives tha, "a chest," tpt, "a boat," and in the Copt. Vers, of Exod. ii, 3, 5, thtbi is the render- ing of tebdh. The Sept. employs two different words. In the narrative of the Flood they use Kijiwrog, and in that of Moses S'l'/Sic;, or according to some MSS. ^/;/3/;. The Book of Wisdom has axiSia ; Berosus and Nicol. Damasc, quoted in Josephus, TrXolov and \dpi>a^. The last is also found in Lucian, De Ded Sy?: c. 12. In the Sibylline Verses the ark is covparioj' Cojiia, cIkoc, and Kijiwrog. The Targum and the Koran have each re- spectively given the Chaldee and the Arabic form of the Hebrew word.
Tills "chest," or "boat," was to be made of gopher (i. 0. cypress) wood, a kind of timber which, both for its lightness and its durability, was employed by the Phcc- nicians for building their vessels. Alexander the Great, Arrian tells us (vii, 19), made use of it for the same pur- pose. The planks of the ark, after being put together, were to be protected by a coating of pitch, or rather bitumen C^SS, Sept. dn^a\ro<S), which was to be laid on both inside and outside, as the most effectual means of making it water-tight, and perhaps also as a protec- tion against the attacks of marine animals. Next to the material, the method of construction is described. The ark was to consist of a number of " nests" (D'^ip),
or small compartments, with a view, no doubt, to the convenient distribution of the different ani- mals and their food. These were to be arranged in three tiers, one above another; "with lower, second, and third (stories) shalt thou make it." jNIeans were also to be provided for letting light into the ark. In the A. V. we read, " A window slialt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above:" words which, it nnist be confessed, convey no very intelligible idea. The original, however, is obscure, and has been differ- ently interpreted. What the " window^," or "light- hole" ("inu, tsohar), was, is very puzzling. It was to be at the top of the ark apparently. If the ^ words "unto a cubit (n5SN"?X) shalt thou finish it above" refer to the window, and not to the ark itself, they seem to imply that this aperture, or skylight, extended to the breadth of a cubit the whole length of the roof. Knobel's explanation is different. By the words, " to a cubit (or within a cubit) shalt thou finish it above," he understands that, the window being in the side of the ark, a space of a cubit was to be left between the top of the window and the overhanging roof of the ark, which Noah removed after the flood had abated (viii, 13). There is, however, no reason to conclude, as he does, that there was only one light. The great objection to supposing that the window was in the side of the ark is that then a great part of the interior must have been left in darkness. Again we are told (viii, 13) that when the flood abated Noah removed the covering of the ark, to look about him to see if the earth were dry. This would have been unnecessary if the window had been in the side. "Unto a cubit shalt thou finish it above" can hardly mean, as some have supposed, that the roof of the ark was to have this pitch : for, consider- ing that the ark was to be fifty cubits in breadth, a roof of a cubit's pitch would have been almost flat. Taylor Lewis (in the Amer. ed. of Lange's Genesis, p. 298) in- geniously maintains that the aperture was at the peak or ridge of the roof. But if so it could not have been merely an open slit, for that would have admitted the rain. Are we tlien to suppose that some transparent, or at least translucent substance was employed? It would almost seem so. Symm. renders the word ha- ^ai'fc; Theodoret has merely ^vpav; Gr.A'enet. tpiora- yojyor; Yu]g. fenesti-atn. The Sept. translates, strange- ly enough, iTriavvdYiov ■Koti](Titg riji' inftwTcv. The root of the word indicates that the tsohar was some- thing shining. Hence, probaltly, the Talmudic explana- tion that God told Noah to fix precious stones in the ark, that they might give as much light as mid-day {Sanh. 108 b). A different word is used in chap, viii, 6, where it is said that Noah opened the windo^v of the ark. There the word is "(ISH {challoii), which frequent- ly occurs elsewhere in the same sense. Certainly the story as there given does imply a transparent window, as Saalschiitz (ArchdoL i, 311) has remarked, for Noah could watch the motions of tlic birds outside, while at the same time lie had to open the window in order to take them in. An objection to this explanation is the supposed improbability of any substance like glass hav- ing been discovered at that early period of the world's history. But we must not forget that even according to the Hebrew chronology the world had been in ex- istence 1656 years at the time of the flood. Vast strides must have been made in knowledge and civilization in such a lapse of time. Arts and sciences may have reached a ripeness of which the record, from its scanti- ness, conveys no adequate conception. The destruction caused by the flood must have obliterated a thousand discoveries, and left men to recover again by slow and patient steps the ground they had lost. A still more serious objection to this su]ipositiou of a glass window is the necessity of ventilation, which would require an open space for the passage of air as well as light. The