Noah's Ark

Noah's Ark is the vessel God commands Noah to build as the means of preserving human and animal life through the flood. It shelters Noah's family and living creatures while the rest of life on dry land perishes; after the waters recede, its passengers emerge into a renewed world, where Noah offers sacrifice and God establishes a lasting covenant with all flesh.

Command and Construction

The Ark is introduced against a world described as corrupt and filled with violence. Noah, presented as righteous and whole-hearted and as one who walked with God, receives the warning that the flood will destroy all flesh. God commands him to make the vessel of gopher wood, with rooms, and to coat it inside and out with pitch.

Its dimensions are specified: three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide, and thirty cubits high. The design includes an opening finished to a cubit at the top, a door in the side, and lower, second, and third stories. Noah is also told to bring aboard food for himself and the creatures. He carries out the instructions as commanded.

Those Preserved Aboard

The Ark holds Noah, his wife, his sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and their wives. Noah is instructed to bring two of every kind of living creature, male and female, so that life may be kept alive with him. The instructions distinguish clean animals, of which seven pairs are to be taken, from animals that are not clean, of which one pair is specified; birds are also taken in seven pairs.

The account dates the flood to the seventeenth day of the second month in Noah's six hundredth year. After the rain begins, Noah and his household enter with the animals, and the LORD shuts him in. The Ark is lifted above the ground as the waters rise; even the high mountains are covered, and all life on dry land perishes except Noah and those with him aboard.

The Waters Recede

The floodwaters prevail for one hundred and fifty days. God remembers Noah and the living creatures with him, sends a wind over the earth, and the waters begin to subside. The Ark comes to rest on the mountains of Ararat on the seventeenth day of the seventh month; later, the tops of the mountains become visible.

Noah tests the conditions outside by sending out a raven and then a dove. The dove first returns because it finds no place to rest. After seven more days, it returns with a freshly plucked olive leaf, showing that the waters have abated; after another seven days, it does not return. Once the ground has dried, God tells Noah and his family to leave the Ark and bring out every living creature, so that life may again multiply on the earth.

Sacrifice and Covenant

After leaving the Ark, Noah builds an altar and offers burnt offerings from the clean animals and birds. God declares that the ground will not again be cursed in this way on account of humanity and that every living thing will not again be struck down as in the flood. The promise is set within the continuing rhythms of the earth: seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night.

God then establishes a covenant with Noah, his descendants, and every living creature that came out of the Ark: a flood will not again destroy all flesh. The bow in the cloud is given as the sign of this enduring covenant between God, the earth, and all living creatures. The Ark's function therefore extends beyond survival through catastrophe: its landing makes possible the sacrifice and promise that frame the post-flood world.