The Building of the Ark
Noach builds an ark of gopher wood—300 cubits long, 50 wide, 30 high, in three decks—and does it in full view of everyone.
The instructions read like a blueprint: "Make yourself an ark of gopher wood, make compartments in the ark, and cover it inside and out with pitch. Three hundred cubits long, fifty wide, thirty high. Make a tzohar for the ark, finish it to a cubit at the top, set its door in its side, and make it with lower, second and third decks." This is not a ship: no sail, no rudder, no oar. It does not sail—it stays afloat.
Inside go Noach, his wife, his three sons—Shem, Cham and Yefet—and their wives: eight people. And the animals: seven pairs of the pure, one pair of the impure, birds, and food for all of them. The sages dwell on the logistics: a year of feeding every living thing, each at its own hour with its own food, sleepless work—and it is this, not the storm, that wears Noach down.
What matters most is that the work was public. The ark could have appeared ready-made; Noach was told to build it slowly, by hand, so the generation would watch and ask.
How we know
Sources
Tanakh
- Bereishit 6:14–22 — the plan of the ark: dimensions, decks, pitch, the tzohar
- Bereishit 7:1–9 — who and what entered the ark: the family, pairs of animals, provisions
Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar
- Bereishit Rabbah 30:7 — 120 years of building and the mockery of his contemporaries
- Bereishit Rabbah 31:11 — the dispute over the tzohar: a window or a shining stone
- Midrash Tanchuma, Noach 5 and 9 — why he had to build it himself and take so long — so that people would ask
Rishonim
- Rashi on Bereishit 6:14 — the same answer: a long build so that passers-by would enquire
Basis: stated in the Tanakh.