Portal:Christianity/Selected article/April 2008

  Noah's Ark was a large vessel built at God's command to save Noah, his family, and a core stock of the world's animals from the Great Flood. The story is told in chapters 6-9 of the Book of Genesis.

Genesis 6-9 tells how God decided to destroy the world because of the wickedness of mankind, selecting Noah, a man "righteous in his generation", instructing him to build an ark and take on board his family and representatives of all the animals and birds. God's flood then destroys all life on earth, but at the height of the deluge "God remembered Noah", and the waters abate and the dry land reappears. The story ends with God entering into a covenant with Noah and his descendants.

The story of Noah's Ark, according to chapters 6 to 9 in the Book of Genesis, begins with God observing mankind's evil behaviour and deciding to flood the earth and destroy all life. However, God found one good man, Noah, "a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time", and decided that he would carry forth the lineage of man. God told Noah to make an ark, and to bring with him his wife, and his sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and their wives. Additionally, he was told to bring examples of all animals and birds, male and female. In order to provide sustenance, he was told to bring and store food.

Noah and his family and the animals entered the Ark, and "the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened, and the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights". The flood covered even the highest mountains to a depth of more than 6 metres (20 feet), and all creatures died; only Noah and those with him on the Ark were left alive. The Flood story is considered by many modern scholars to consist of two slightly different interwoven accounts, hence the apparent uncertainty regarding the duration of the flood (40 or 150 days) and the number of animals taken on board Noah's Ark (2 of each kind, or 7 pairs of some kinds).

Eventually, the Ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. The waters continued to recede, and the hilltops emerged. Noah sent out a raven which "went to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth". Next, Noah sent a dove out, but it returned having found nowhere to land. After a further seven days, Noah again sent out the dove, and it returned with an olive leaf in its beak, and he knew that the waters had subsided. Noah waited seven days more and sent out the dove once more, and this time it did not return. Then he and his family and all the animals left the Ark, and Noah made a sacrifice to God, and God resolved that he would never again curse the ground because of man, and never again would He destroy all life on it in this manner.

In order to remember this promise, God put a rainbow in the clouds, saying, "Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth".

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