Ark Mark One

  We were in Church at Matha as usual on Sunday, and I was interested to find that Yves, our Pasteur, had decided to base his sermon, or reflection on the story of Noah and his famous Ark. As the current proprietor of an Ark, even if more in name than on the sea, I was naturally interested. Yves did succeed in finding facts which I had never noticed from this familiar story.
   Firstly, the extreme longevity of the people at this time. A detailed list of characters is included and they mostly seem to live 950 years plus! Noah`s father,Lamech, was 187 when Noah was born and died at the age of 777. Noah was 500 years old when he started building the Ark, and 600 when it floated on the Flood. Makes the work seem more credible, he had plenty of time to do it!
   Also, there is a puzzling account of how creatures from the spirit world,sometimes described as sons of God, took wives of beautiful human females and had descendants from them described as giants or heroes. They formed part of the events which disgusted God with his creation, and which led Him to decide to send a flood to erase all life. I had never heard this previously.
   The dimensions of the Ark were detailed, in metres, rather than cubits and spans, which don`t tell us much about size (do YOU know how long is a cubit?  Me neither!) The Ark was thus 150 mtrs long by 25 mtrs wide by 15 mtrs high, a sizable craft! It had three decks divided into stalls,a skylight one and a half mtrs below the roof, and a door in the side. After having embarked the animals as detailed by God, the promised 40 days of rain flooded the Earth and the Ark became the sole refuge for life on Earth. However I had not appreciated that the Ark didn`t ground for 150 days and a further period of 139 days went by before the ground had dried enough to disembark. Just think of the problems of feeding all the animals! You will be glad to hear that the effort of building and sailing the Ark did not kill off the 600 yr-old, and he lived a further 350 years, dying at the age of 950. There is hope for me yet!

   Hope you found this interesting. You can read all about it in Genesis chapters 6 to 9.

    Bye for now, going to feed the animals!