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Preparation for the Flood. 14 Make yourself an ark of gopherwood,[a] equip the ark with various compartments, and cover it inside and out with pitch. 15 This is how you shall build it: the length of the ark will be three hundred cubits, its width fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits.[b] 16 Make an opening for daylight[c] and finish the ark a cubit above it. Put the ark’s entrance on its side; you will make it with bottom, second and third decks.

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Footnotes

  1. 6:14 Gopherwood: an unidentified wood mentioned only in connection with the ark. It may be the wood of the cypress, which in Hebrew sounds like “gopher” and was widely used in antiquity for shipbuilding.
  2. 6:15 Hebrew “cubit,” lit., “forearm,” is the distance from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger, about eighteen inches (a foot and a half). The dimensions of Noah’s ark were approximately 440 × 73 × 44 feet. The ark of the Babylonian flood story was an exact cube, 120 cubits (180 feet) in length, width, and height.
  3. 6:16 Opening for daylight: a conjectural rendering of the Hebrew word sohar, occurring only here. The reference is probably to an open space on all sides near the top of the ark to admit light and air. The ark also had a window or hatch, which could be opened and closed (8:6).