A Big Boat (Gen 6:14–15)

The Flood

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¹⁴ Cover it inside and out with covering. וְכָֽפַרְתָּ֥ אֹתָ֛הּ מִבַּ֥יִת וּמִח֖וּץ בַּכֹּֽפֶר׃

This last phrase of v. 14 has two words from the root כפר, each of which is a hapax legomenon — kind of. The verbal root is quite common in its Piel form, where it has various meanings related to the idea of “atonement.” The Day of Atonement, Yom ha-Kippurim, gets its name from this Piel verb. Our verse has the only example of the verb used in Qal.

⇥ See Lesson 15 of my Hebrew course to learn about Qal and Piel. ⇤

The noun at the end of the phrase, כֹּֽפֶר kópher, clearly comes from the same root, so I’ve translated it the same way to show you the likeness. This too appears a number of times in the Bible, but just once with this meaning; kópher #4 (as the dictionaries count them), related to the Piel verb, appears a dozen times and two others once or twice each.

Here’s how some others translate our phrase:

• KJV: pitch it … with pitch

• NETS: bituminize it … with bitumen.

• NRSV/NJPS: cover it … with pitch.

Having spent some time trying to figure out the difference between bitumen and pitch, I think there is none. Here’s the Oxford English Dictionary on pitch:

A sticky, resinous, black or dark brown substance, hard when cold and semi-liquid when hot, that is obtained as a residue from the distillation of wood tar or turpentine and is used for caulking the seams of ships, protecting wood from moisture, etc.

And on bitumen:

In modern scientific use, the generic name of certain mineral inflammable substances, native hydrocarbons more or less oxygenated, liquid, semi-solid, and solid, including naphtha, petroleum, asphalt, etc. elastic bitumen noun mineral caoutchouc or Elaterite.

…

Originally, a kind of mineral pitch found in Palestine and Babylon, used as mortar, etc. The same as asphalt, mineral pitch, Jew's pitch, Bitumen judaicum.

Okay, it is dark, sticky stuff — apparently kind of Jewish — that you use to caulk a ship. What about Moses’s little basket?

^{Exod 2:3} When [his mother] could hide him no longer, she got a wicker basket for him and caulked it with bitumen and pitch [‏בַחֵמָ֖ר וּבַזָּ֑פֶת]. She put the child into it and placed it among the reeds by the bank of the Nile. [NJPS]

So why is it kópher in our verse and not the more common words ḥemar or zéphet? Because (I presume) kupru is the Akkadian word for this stuff, and that’s what the Flood boat in Atrahasis and Gilgamesh is caulked with. CAD has more than a full page (two columns) of references to kupru, so that was quite a common word. Our verse starts with “pre-Greek” gópher and ends with Semitic kópher, a nice reflection of the composite nature of this entire story.

Two quick notes for Hebrew learners:

⇥ Both Gen 6:14 and Exod 2:3 literally refer to caulking with “the” bitumen (or whatever); GKC §126n explains that the definite article is used in Biblical Hebrew with names of materials where English would usually omit it.

⇥ “Inside and out” in Biblical Hebrew is an idiom, literally “from house and from outside.”

One more thing. This box is considerably bigger than the one Moses was put in.

¹⁵ This is how you should make the box: 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, and 30 cubits high.

 וְזֶ֕ה אֲשֶׁ֥ר תַּֽעֲשֶׂ֖ה אֹתָ֑הּ שְׁלֹ֧שׁ מֵא֣וֹת אַמָּ֗ה אֹ֚רֶךְ הַתֵּבָ֔ה חֲמִשִּׁ֤ים אַמָּה֙ רָחְבָּ֔הּ וּשְׁלֹשִׁ֥ים אַמָּ֖ה קוֹמָתָֽהּ׃

Some of you may be asking, as Noah himself did in the old comedy routine, “What’s a cubit?” Yes, this is the first place we have encountered this famous biblical word. The best way for me to explain it is to tell you the same thing the judge says when you are sworn in to the jury: “Raise your right hand.” The part of your arm that you are now holding vertically is a cubit long from fingertip to elbow.

Call it 18 inches as a rough estimate. I’m not going anywhere near the wide variety of lengths an “actual” cubit may have had at various times and places in the ancient world. To give you a ballpark estimate of the size of this thing, I will go not to a ball park but to a football field. The box Noah’s being told to make is considerably longer — add an extra end zone and a half to each end of the field — but it is only about half as wide. (That’s American football; it would be only about a third of the width of a soccer field if I understand correctly.)

John Walton comments:

It would have had a displacement of approximately 43,000 tons and a capacity of about 15,000 tons. The largest ships known from the last half of the first millennium B.C. from Alexandria carried no more than 4,000 tons and were considered of remarkable size—wonders of the classical world and testimony to their technological advancement.

There are 16 other places in the Bible where we find the length, width, and height of a object given (all in cubits); 10 of the 16 are in Exodus 25–38 in the description of the Tabernacle, and the other six are in descriptions of Solomon’s building the Temple and (once) the Lebanon Forest House, apparently part of his palace. That means 15 of the 17 cases come in priestly contexts. This sort of specification and detail seems to be characteristic of the priestly world view.

While we’re on the subject of Solomon’s Temple, let’s look at its dimensions:

^{1 Kgs 6:2} The House which King Solomon built for the LORD was 60 cubits long, 20 cubits wide, and 30 cubits high.

In other words, you could put 10 of these babies inside Noah’s box, in two long rows, and still have a comfortable 15´-wide passageway to walk back and forth between them to get to the hotdog stand. That is one big boat. There is just one more verse of construction details, which we’ll turn to next time.