Fear No Fear

(All scripture from the World English Bible, ebible.org, all rights reserved)

“This is how you shall make it. The length of the ship shall be three hundred cubits, its width fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits. You shall make a roof in the ship, and you shall finish it to a cubit upward. You shall set the door of the ship in its side. You shall make it with lower, second, and third levels.“
(Genesis 6:15-16)

When God tasks us with something, He doesn’t leave us floundering. Just as with the tabernacle in later years, God provides the blueprint for the thing that must be made in order to survive. Noah could have made a boat. But would it have been enough for all God had for him to do? Would Noah’s idea of a boat survived the event that he could only imagine? Would it hold the animals that God would call for? God doesn’t take CHANCES. God makes a plan, empowers us to complete the plan, instructs us about the plan, and walks with us as we go through it. It would be unjust to ask us to do something without telling us how. Sometimes we need lots of details and sometimes we don’t, but God will ALWAYS prepare us to do what we are called to do.

A lot of people have put a lot of work into figuring out the dimensions of the ark and what it would have looked like. There is a disagreement over exactly what a cubit is (1.5 feet per cubit or 1.75 feet per cubit, for example), but everyone who has done serious research agrees that the basic dimensions leading to the basic shape of the ark is the prime design to survive a flood of these proportions. People have even made models and simulated a massive flood. Every time THIS design is the best and ALWAYS survives, floating properly and not in any way turning over. God made the PERFECT way. As the sage Ibn Ezra writes: ‘Its height was a tenth of its length, so that it would be able to float on the water and not be overturned by the wind.’

The sage Rabbeinu Bahya writes about the MERCY God was trying to show by having Noah build the ark: ‘He had hoped that when people would watch the vast amount of time and energy which Noach (and his sons) put into constructing this huge Ark that he must have known what he was doing, and that at least some people would take his warning of the impending deluge to heart to repent and change their lifestyle. If they would nonetheless ignore such warnings they were obviously irredeemable sinners and would deserve whatever G-d decreed for them.’

The sage Kli Yakar writes about the Flood from a more ‘hidden truths’ point of view: ‘Three hundred cubits shall be the length of the ark. The text specifies for us the measurements of its length, width, and height for two reasons. First, to inform us of the magnitude of the miracle that a small space contained much, as there were large creatures there such as elephants and re’emim [wild oxen]. Second, to inform us that the primary cause of the flood waters was due to sexual immorality, as it is written The sons of God saw the daughters of man, etc., and as our Sages said (Sanhedrin 108a), “With much they sinned, and with much they were judged.” The reason for this is that through sexual immorality, they desecrated the holiness of God’s name “Yah” [yud-heh] which mediates between man and woman. When the letters yud and heh are removed from them [ish and ishah, man and woman], what remains is “esh” and “esh” [fire and fire], as it is written For it is a fire consuming unto destruction (Job 31:12). This is what our Sages meant when they said (Sanhedrin 108b), “With hot liquid they sinned, and with hot liquid they were judged,” for they themselves ignited the fire. Similarly, we find in this passage the number 15 in several places: it states that the waters rose 15 cubits above [the mountains]. Also, the waters prevailed for 150 days, which is 15 tens. The measurements of the ark’s length, width, and height also indicate the number 15, for 300 cubits in length by 50 cubits in width means that the cubits of surface area were 15,000 square cubits. The height was 30 cubits, and it had three levels, thus 10 cubits for each level, as it had lower, second, and third decks, all equal in size. This results in 150,000 cubic cubits for each level. Thus, the 15,000 cubits in each surface area corresponds to the 15 cubits that the waters rose above the mountains. And the 150,000 cubits in each level corresponds to the 150 days that the waters prevailed, which is 15 tens. All these occurrences of the number 15 indicate that although their final judgment was sealed due to robbery, nevertheless, the primary cause was sexual immorality and the desecration of God’s name “Yah,” which has the numerical value of 15.’