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 … . . .
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?
