The usual Hebrew word translated 'atonement' is kawphar. Only one other word in the Old Testament is translated atonement and it is used only 5 times. It is the word kippur. The word kippur is derived from kawphar and in the New King James the word kawphar is translated here in Genesis 6:14 as ‘cover.' In the King James Version that same word is translated as pitch.
Atonement is used in the sense of the action that accomplishes a task. That is, in Genesis 6:14 in the sense of covering. It is covering the wood with pitch that prevents the ark from leaking. There is the first definition that we run into. Kawphar means to cover. They went kind of wild there in the King James Version when they used the word pitch.
The reason I said earlier that the word atonement has changed its meaning fairly often through time is because depending upon the context in which it appears it can be applied so many ways it is almost amazing.
We are only going to concentrate on the spiritual sense and so we will find in the Bible that the word kawphar is translated as purged, not just cover but purged, clean, expiate, pay for, make acceptable, hide, placate, appease, and cancel out.
What this means is that when you run across the word atonement always look at the context in which it appears because that will give you a pretty good idea of the way God intends it to be understood. Since it is capable of so many different applications it is very good to look at in the context in which it appears.
As we move through history given in the Bible and other details of what Christ accomplishes, the same term is better understood - now catch this one - as wipe away. It does not appear in the Old Testament but that is the way that many Protestant denominations have applied the word to mean wipe away, and incidentally it is a good application of the word and there is a reason for that. They have used that besides merely cover because cover can be misleading. Look at the way it is used in Genesis 6:14. Cover wood. What does that have to do with sin? That is not what we are really interested in. That is kawphar.
So make sure you are looking at it in its context because it may require variation of what the word means. In the words there are shades of difference used in the emphasis. To Judaism the Day of Atonement became the most important holy day largely because of their history of going into captivity or wandering, which pictured to their rabbis their separation from both God and their homeland.
But I can understand why wipe away became more prominent in Protestantism, rather than cover, because merely covering something indicates that what is covered still exists. It is merely hidden, but wipe away indicates the cause of the disharmony is totally dealt with, it is completely gone. Is that not more how you would like your sins to be in relation with God? Completely wiped away, gone. Not merely covered, not merely hidden from view but gone, totally.
You see here we begin to get into the meaning as it is applied frequently in the New Testament, clean, we are cleansed by the blood of Jesus Christ. The sins are not merely covered, they are wiped away. We are clean, they no longer exist. We are purged from sin. The sinful nature is washed away from us.
In the case of sin it pictures something foul, filthy, and dirty that lies between God and man, actively keeping the two separated and that man is responsible for that foul thing's existence. God does not sin. Covering it is sometimes a means of bridging a separation. If it is merely covered it is not dealt with sufficiently to take it from one's conscience, and thus guilt remains and the relationship is still being negatively affected. That is another reason why the Protestants changed the emphasis to wipe away. We want our conscience cleaned.
So covering is similar to sweeping something under the rug and thus the problem with the Old Covenant sacrifices was that they became … . . .
Moses did not include blueprints in the Bible. It would have been nice, but he just had to write it down in words, and he had to write it very simply for us. However, he recorded enough information to give us a rough sketch, and we can fill in the planks.
First, God told Noah to build an ark. This is the Hebrew word teba. This is the same word used in Exodus 2:3, 5 to describe the floating basket of bulrushes into which Moses was placed and set afloat on the Nile River to be found by the daughter of Pharaoh. We have a little ark in the story of Moses, which was only big enough to hold the baby, and we have a huge ark in Genesis 6, both being called teba, or an ark.
Teba, the scholars tell us, probably derives from an Egyptian word tebt or thebt. In Egyptian, it was a large, sea-worthy ship or barge used for transporting large objects. For instance, they would go way up the Nile River, and they might find a nice chunk of stone of some kind. They would find a way to cut it out and bring it back down to the water, and then transport it back to Egypt proper, and they would use an ark, or tebt to do this.
It is a large, sea-worthy ship or barge used for the transport of large objects, like obelisks, or other royal needs and processions. The essential idea of this word is that it is sea-worthy box or chest, meaning it was box-shaped. Because it had the shape of a rather long and low rectangle, it received great stability to float. It was obviously a craft that would not founder in rough seas.
I have seen a few experiments done with various shapes of this kind. One that I saw was going down a river with strong current in which somebody had built up a mountain of rocks so that the ark would head right into it. What happened was that it came up and gently hit this mound of rocks and then gently swung around it and went on. Despite the turbulence of the river, it did not turn over but was very stable.
It was a very stable craft even in rough water. Remember also that Noah's ark was being designed for use in 40 days and 40 nights of deluge rain, with fountains opening up in the deep and elsewhere, and probably winds and other things going on. This shape kept it stable.
I should also remind you that it was probably flat-bottomed or nearly so. It was box-shaped. Remember, it had no need to sail; all it needed to do was float. God would see that it would set down where He wanted it to go. No need of sails, no need of direction, no keel, no rudder - it is a box.
Second thing: God tells Noah to make it of gopher wood. It is not called gopher wood because of some little rodent, but because it is only a transliteration of the Hebrew word. They left it untranslated into the English, and spelled it the way it sounded to English ears. It occurs once in the Bible; this is the only place in the Bible in which this word appears. The meaning is somewhat under debate about what this gopher wood is. There are two good possibilities, and I think the first one is more likely of the two.
The first one is that it might refer to cyprus trees and wood. Some say cedar; some say pine or some other resinous wood; but to me, cyprus seems to be the best bet. Cyprus is excellent for building watercraft because it is straight-grained, easily worked, very hard, and dense. Most importantly, it is very durable and resistant to rot. The doors to St. Peter's Basilica were made of cyprus wood, and they lasted over 1100 years. When they were taken down, there was no decay in them after 1100 years. It was an extremely durable wood.
Cyprus grew in great abundance in upper Mesopotamia and Assyria after the Flood. While Alexander the Great was in Babylon, he ordered a whole fleet built for his next adventure, and it was built of cyprus wood. Perhaps there was some in Noah's area before the Flood. We do not know. We do not know where Noah was before the Flood; the Bible does not say. Maybe he was close to the Garden of Eden or maybe … . . .
God was very specific here, and again, God is instructing Noah to build a floating box or chest, providing him the length, width, and height; to build a window, to build a door. But what is missing from these instructions that was given to Noah? There is no rudder and there are no means of propulsion. Boats and ships are built to navigate the waters, to transport people or something from Point A to Point B. The ark did not have the ability to do this because it had no way to determine where it would go. Why? Because the ark was not designed to go anywhere. In fact, once the earth was flooded there was no place for it to go. Its only purpose was to stay afloat and keep its occupants alive. God was the navigator of the ark. Noah did not know what was happening on the outside of the ark at all. They could not see outside.
It is clear that Noah was made motivated by a deep and abiding respect for God and took the warning of God of this impending crisis very seriously. We know that Noah walked with God. And it is interesting to me that in these scriptures about Noah, Noah does not talk to God like Abraham and Moses did. If you will notice, Noah is only listening to what God has to say and he obeyed. He obeyed everything that God told him to do no matter how difficult it would be. There is no evidence at all that his faith in God ever wavered; and he accomplished a significant undertaking which consumed approximately 120 years. There is no implication of any hesitation of obedience to God on Noah's part.
After God's first set of instructions He gave him, Genesis 6:22 says, "Noah did everything just as God commanded him." And then in Genesis 7:5, it also says, "And Noah did all that the Lord commanded him." And he did not do just that. In II Peter 2:5, it says that Noah was a preacher of righteousness. So during that 120 years, as he was building this enormous construction, he was preaching, he was warning people, and I am sure that Noah became very famous as they watched this huge vessel being constructed. And for what reason? And so I am sure that he had, probably, every day an opportunity to warn the people that they need to repent because there was an approaching doom.
Now, these were two very special men and I do not think it is a coincidence that they are linked here, and I want to just go over just a few parallels between these two men. Both Moses and Noah were saved by an ark. Noah, along with his family and the animals, were saved in this huge, massive vessel and Moses in this miniature basket of a vessel. Noah and his sons carefully coated the massive structure with pitch so no water could seep in and Moses' mother covered the little ark with the pitch and what it calls sludge.
What is interesting about the subject of pitch is that it is covered under the Day of Pentecost. It was a covering. The blood of Jesus Christ's sacrifice is our only means of truly having our sins covered and our hope for eternal life. Noah's only hope was the covering of pitch on the inside and outside to be saved. When our sins are covered, they are completely hidden. It may not be pretty, but since we do sin, we can have a continued life without guilt, which leads into my next point. Both arks were under divine protection. Noah and Moses, their only purpose in these arks was to stay afloat. These vessels, again, had no means of navigation or able to steer. How could a three month old baby steer anyway? And when Noah and his family entered the ark, it says the Lord shut them in. What would you think inside as those waters were rising not knowing what was going on on the outside.
Turn over to Genesis 6, verse 13. In one sense, this sermon is a word study, not completely but partially. And it is always interesting to look at the meanings. There are various meanings that even a single word has in Scripture. The judgment encourages preparation for the coming of Christ. So the idea of judgment spurs us to righteous living. And this preparedness is not simply a matter of intellectual knowledge, but a faithful response to God's grace.
As an act of grace, God warns Noah of a coming judgment and reveals a plan of salvation, that is, the construction of the ark. Noah prepared for the judgment by obedience, literally building his own salvation.
So Noah is being told to do something physical in preparation for what was coming and going to happen to the world.
We should take note of that in our own lives today. That God told Noah to prepare for what he could see was coming and what God told him was coming to the world. We know what is coming to this world and we should take heed to this and be preparing ourselves for what is coming, because we do not know how much of it will have to go through. Hopefully not the Tribulation, but it can get pretty bad before that. So we should take this to heart about preparing. And that is what I mean by judgment because it can encourage people to prepare because knowing there is a coming judgment upon our nation or around the world that we do not want to end up being part of, we should prepare for that.
It takes faith and a lot of it. And we need God's help to be able to grow in faith.
Similarly, prior to the destruction of the firstborn in Egypt, the Lord graciously revealed to Moses the provisions for the Passover. Reminiscent of the description of Noah's obedience, the Israelites are said to have prepared themselves according to the Lord's instructions. They obeyed and were spared.
Here God selected a man, Noah, who was not a shipbuilder. Noah was about 500 years old and, like I said, from the profession a shipbuilder he was not. Yet God trusted him to do what he was told. He had faith in Noah.
The dimensions of the ark on the 18-inch cubit would have been four hundred fifty feet in length, seventy-five feet wide, forty-five feet in height. If they used the larger cubit of 22 1/2 inches, the ark would have been six hundred feet in length, one hundred feet wide, and sixty feet high. Here is a man who had never built a boat.
As one comparison we use, the battleship Oregon was three hundred forty-eight feet in length. The Titanic was eight hundred twenty-five feet in length, ninety-three feet high, and weighed 46,000 tons. Using the smaller cubit with the square ends on the ark, it would almost be of the cube of the size of the Titanic. And this is the ship that Noah was asked to build. Yet, God had faith in Noah to accomplish what He asked of him and it was a tremendous job and it was an important job because He was going to save mankind from destruction.
The top population estimates at that time were somewhere around 11 billion people. What kind of ridicule did Noah suffer? What kind of laughter? What kind of catcalls? It was Noah and his sons and the wives, and I am sure he hired some help, but they built the ark. Yet he honored God's trust in him and with God&39;s help he finished the job. You see, God had faith in Noah to do what he was called to do.
The word ‘cover' is kaphar. The word translated ‘pitch' is kopher. The change of two letters there, two vowels. That second one is the derivative of the root kaphar. Noah covered the ark with pitch, the bottom of it, probably the sides as well, to keep the flood waters from where Noah and his family were. The Flood was God's judgment against the evil world, but Noah's family was safe because they were covered, they were sheltered. Do you get the sense of the word?
