Bible chapter guide

Genesis 6

Violence fills the earth and the LORD regrets making humankind, but Noah finds favour. God tells him to build an ark of gopher wood, three hundred cubits long, fifty wide and thirty high, with rooms, three decks and a door, and to bring in his family and the animals.

Summary written for the Labs; read the chapter itself for the full text.

What happens in this chapter

The chapter opens with the sons of God taking wives and the Nephilim on the earth, then gives the reason for the flood: the LORD sees that every thought of the human heart is evil and that the earth is full of violence. Noah alone is called righteous and blameless, a man who walked with God, and God tells him what is coming. The instructions are brief: an ark of gopher wood, with rooms, pitch inside and out, three hundred by fifty by thirty cubits, finished to a cubit at the top, with a door in the side and three levels. Noah is to bring in his wife, his sons and their wives, a male and a female of every kind of animal, and food for them all, and the chapter ends by saying he did everything God commanded.

What the lab shows, and where to look

The Noah's Ark lab builds the ark at 300 by 50 by 30 cubits and lets you switch from the common cubit (about 135 m long) to the royal one (about 156 m). Start with the ark itself, then open Hull shape: Genesis gives no shape at all, so the lab draws a plain box and can also show a ship-like hull. Gopher wood and the pitch are named in the text; the lab's straight planks and dark coating are illustration. The rooms, the three decks and the cubit-high opening come from the text, but how they are laid out is reconstruction, and each card says so. You can also set the ark beside a football pitch, a jumbo jet or a large container ship. The verse page for Genesis 6:15 takes the three numbers one at a time.

Questions people ask

How big was Noah's ark?

Three hundred cubits long, fifty wide and thirty high (Genesis 6:15). With a common cubit of about 45 cm that is roughly 135 × 22.5 × 13.5 m; with a royal cubit of about 52 cm, about 156 × 26 × 15.6 m. Either way it is longer than a football pitch and far smaller than today's largest container ships. The cubits are in the text; the metres depend on which cubit was meant, and Genesis does not say.

Textually stated

What shape was the ark?

Genesis gives three measurements and says nothing about the shape of the hull. The Hebrew word for the ark, tevah, is used elsewhere only for the basket that carried the baby Moses, which points to a box made to float rather than a ship made to sail; it had no stated sail, oars or rudder. Pointed bows and fins in some modern designs are guesses, and the lab marks them as such.

Strongly supported

What was gopher wood?

No one knows. The word appears only here in the Bible, and most translations leave it untranslated. Cypress is the most common guess, with cedar and pine also suggested, and some read the word as a way of treating timber rather than a kind of tree.

Speculative

See it in the Labs

See Noah's ark and its size in 3D

How sure can we be?

Textually stated
The ark was 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide and 30 cubits high.
Stated directly in the text.
Textually stated
The ark was made of gopher wood.
Stated directly in the text.
Textually stated
The ark was sealed with pitch on the inside and the outside.
Stated directly in the text.
Textually stated
The ark was divided into rooms.
Stated directly in the text.
Textually stated
The ark had lower, second and third levels.
Stated directly in the text.
Textually stated
Noah was told to make a tsohar and finish it to a cubit upward.
Stated directly in the text, though the meaning of tsohar is uncertain.

Explore this chapter in the Knowledge Graph

Read the chapter

King James Version (KJV) Chinese Union Version, 1919 (Wikisource)