Noah's Ark · The Types of Christ
Noah's Ark as a Type
A wooden box, one door, sealed inside and out — and everyone who went through that door lived. Peter, writing about baptism, says the ark was a picture of something happening now — and he uses the word for it himself.
What the Ark Actually Was
— a vessel, described in feet and cubits before it is anything elseTHE ARTWORKEdward Hicks was an American folk painter and a Quaker preacher, and he painted the ark the way a preacher would: no storm, no drama, just a long orderly procession of animals walking toward an opening in the side of a dark hull. That is the page’s subject exactly — not the water, but the way in.
Before anything else is said about the ark, say what it was. Genesis gives measurements, a material, a coating, a number of decks, and a door. Three hundred cubits by fifty by thirty. Gopher wood. Pitch on the inside and the outside. A window. Three floors. One door, set in the side. Eight people. And then a line Genesis goes out of its way to record: the LORD shut him in.
This page is about that vessel. The flood — how far the water went, what the evidence shows, what Genesis 6 means before the rain starts — belongs to its own pages, and they are linked below rather than repeated here.
Then God said to Noah, “The end of all living creatures has come before Me, because through them the earth is full of violence. Now behold, I will destroy both them and the earth.The commission begins with a verdict, and the building instructions follow it.
And behold, I will bring floodwaters upon the earth to destroy every creature under the heavens that has the breath of life. Everything on the earth will perish. But I will establish My covenant with you, and you will enter the ark—you and your sons and your wife and your sons’ wives with you.The flood is announced and a covenant is promised in the same breath — before a single board is cut.
The wood and the pitch
Make for yourself an ark of gopher wood; make rooms in the ark and coat it with pitch inside and out.Genesis 6:14
The Hebrew for the pitch is kopher. Everywhere else the word floor glosses that same number, it means a ransom price — Exodus 30:12, Numbers 35:31-32, Psalm 49:7, Job 33:24, Proverbs 13:8. That is an observation about a word, not a claim that Genesis intends it.
The measurements
And this is how you are to build it: The ark is to be 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, and 30 cubits high.Genesis 6:15
Three hundred by fifty by thirty cubits, stated as given. Genesis attaches no meaning to the numbers; see the strip below for what the Fathers made of them.
One door, in the side
You are to make a roof for the ark, finish its walls a cubit from the top, place a door in the side of the ark, and build lower, middle, and upper decks.Genesis 6:16
A window above, three decks, and a single door. Everything that lived went through it. Genesis reports the door and never interprets it.
Shut in from outside
And they entered, the male and female of every living thing, as God had commanded Noah. Then the LORD shut him in.Genesis 7:16
Noah goes in; the LORD closes the door. Jamieson, Fausset & Brown render the Hebrew literally as “covered him round about.” The last hand on the door is not Noah's.
The eight
who disobeyed long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In the ark a few people, only eight souls, were saved through water.1 Peter 3:20
Peter counts them, and this is the hinge: the sentence that names the eight is the sentence that turns to baptism in the next breath.
A reading of the Fathers — not something Genesis says
Make thee an ark - תבת tebath, a word which is used only to express this vessel, and that in which Moses was preserved, Exo 2:3, Exo 2:5. It signifies no more than our word vessel in its common acceptation - a hollow place capable of containing persons, goods, etc., without any particular reference to shape or form. Gopher wood - Some think the cedar is meant; others, the cypress. Bochart renders this probable,
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible, 1832Methodist
Genesis 6:14
Clarke is making a small, checkable point that most retellings miss. The Hebrew word for this vessel is used of exactly two things in the whole Bible: this ark, and the basket that carried the infant Moses down the Nile. Two vessels, one word, both carrying someone through water they could not have survived.
You shall place the door of the ark on the lower side. This door, through which men and all the animals to be saved in the ark entered, signifies the unity of faith, without which no one can enter the Church; for there is one …
Bede· Commentary on Genesis (Hexaemeron), 735Church Father
Genesis 6:16
and the Lord shut him in--literally, "covered him round about." The "shutting him in" intimated that Noah had become the special object of divine care and protection, and that to those without the season of grace was over (Mt 25:10).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, 1871Reformed
Genesis 7:16
Augustine on the ark's measurements — a Father's reading, at full strengthCity of God 15.26
It is one of the most famous typological passages in Christian literature, and it is quoted here in full rather than summarised, because a reader deserves to weigh it himself. What it is not is an argument Genesis makes. Genesis gives the numbers and stops.
Undoubtedly the ark is a symbol of the city of God on its pilgrimage in history. It is a figure of the church that was saved by the wood on which there hung the "Mediator between God and men, himself man, Jesus Christ." Even the very measurements of length, height and breadth of the ark are meant to point to the reality of the human body into which he came as it was foretold that he would come. It will be recalled that the length of a normal body from head to foot is six times the breadth from one side to the other and ten times the thickness from back to front. Measure a man who is lying on the ground, either prone or supine. He is six times as long from head to foot as he is wide from left to right or right to left, and he is ten times as long as he is high from the ground up. That is why the ark was made three hundred cubits in length, fifty in breadth and thirty in height. As for the door in the side, that surely, symbolizes the open wound made by the lance in the side of the Crucified—the door by which those who come to him enter in, in the sense that believers enter the church by means of the sacraments that issued from that wound. It was ordered that the ark be made out of squared timbers—a symbol of the foursquare stability of a holy life, which, like a cube, stands firm however it is turned. So it is with every other detail of the ark's construction. They are all symbols of something in the church.
Augustine of Hippo· City of God 15.26, 430Church Father
Genesis 6:14
Going in, and coming outGenesis 7:1-23 · Genesis 8:1-19
The narrative is spare, and worth having in front of you. God tells Noah to come into the ark — come, not go, which is a small word doing a lot of work. Everything living outside is blotted out. Then a sentence turns the whole story around: God remembered Noah. And at the end, nobody lets himself out; Noah waits, and God speaks again before the door opens.
Then the LORD said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and all your family, because I have found you righteous in this generation.Come into the ark — the invitation is issued from inside.
But God remembered Noah and all the animals and livestock that were with him in the ark. And God sent a wind over the earth, and the waters began to subside.The hinge of the whole account: God remembered Noah.
And every living thing on the face of the earth was destroyed—man and livestock, crawling creatures and birds of the air; they were blotted out from the earth, and only Noah and those with him in the ark remained.Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark.
Then God said to Noah, “Come out of the ark, you and your wife, along with your sons and their wives. Bring out all the living creatures that are with you—birds, livestock, and everything that crawls upon the ground—so that they can spread out over the earth and be fruitful and multiply upon it.” So Noah came out, along with his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives. Every living creature, every creeping thing, and every bird—everything that moves upon the earth—came out of the ark, kind by kind.He went in when God said to, and he came out when God said to.
Why the flood is not on this pageone page, one place
The extent of the water, the geological arguments, the chronology, and the sons-of-God question of Genesis 6 are all real subjects with real evidence on more than one side — and they are handled where they belong, at full length, rather than compressed into a paragraph here.
Peter's Own Word
— 1 Peter 3:20-21 — the typology on this page is the apostle's, not the site'sA great deal of preaching about the ark is inference. This part is not. Peter takes the eight people carried through the water and says the thing they went through corresponds to something now — and the Greek word he reaches for, antitupon, is the technical term for the reality an older picture was pointing at. It occurs twice in the entire New Testament: here, and in Hebrews 9:24, where the earthly holy place is called a copy of the true one.
For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit, in whom He also went and preached to the spirits in prison who disobeyed long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In the ark a few people, only eight souls, were saved through water. And this water symbolizes the baptism that now saves you also—not the removal of dirt from the body, but the pledge of a clear conscience toward God—through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers subject to Him.Read the whole passage before the argument about it: the claim and its qualification are one sentence.
2 in the whole New Testament
antitupon1 Peter 3:21, of the ark and the water. Hebrews 9:24, of the earthly sanctuary. The New Testament’s entire use of the word, and one of the two is this verse.
The Greek for the ark itself
kibotosHebrews 11:7 and 1 Peter 3:20 — the two New Testament writers who make an argument out of Noah both use it.
Now the sentence everyone argues about. Peter says baptism now saves us — and then, in the same breath, before anyone can misunderstand him, he says what he does not mean: not the removing of dirt from the body, but the pledge of a good conscience toward God, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The qualification is not a footnote somebody added later. It is Peter, in the same sentence, defining his own terms.
The inward grace, not the outward act
The rite signifies; what saves is the faith and the conscience the rite expresses, and the resurrection Peter names at the end of the verse. This is John Wesley’s reading, and the broadly evangelical one — and it is the tradition MannaFest itself grew out of, named here as heritage rather than as a verdict.
The antitype whereof - The thing typified by the ark, even baptism, now saveth us - That is, through the water of baptism we are saved from the sin which overwhelms the world as a flood: not, indeed, the bare outward sign, but the inward grace; a divine consciousness that both our persons and our actions are accepted through him who died and rose again for us.
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament, 1755Wesleyan
1 Peter 3:21
The means God genuinely uses
Baptism is where salvation is applied — never mechanically, and never apart from faith, but really. This is the reading of the sacramental traditions, Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran and Anglican, and Bede states it early, tying the good conscience Peter names to unfeigned faith.
Not the removal of the filth of the flesh, etc. For where is a good conscience, except where there is also unfeigned faith? For the apostle Paul teaches that the goal of the commandment is love from a pure heart, and a good conscience, and …
Bede· Commentary on the Catholic Epistles, 735Church Father
1 Peter 3:21
Deliverance through judgment
The stress falls on being carried through: one flood, and it destroys and saves in the same act. Andreas of Caesareaputs it that way directly, and Jamieson, Fausset & Brown route the whole verse through resurrection life.
The water of the flood is a type of baptism because it both punished evil people and saved the good, just as baptism expels evil spirits and saves those who turn to Christ. This shows the great power of baptism, and how much we need …
Andreas of Caesarea· Catena, 614Church Father
1 Peter 3:21
As Christ's death unto sin is the source of the believer's death unto, and so deliverance from, sin's penalty and power; so His resurrection life is the source of the believer's new spiritual life.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, 1871Reformed
1 Peter 3:21
Here is what all three readings hold in common, and it is worth saying plainly rather than leaving to the reader to notice. Every one of them takes Peter’s qualification as governing the whole sentence. Nobody quoted on this page thinks water by itself does anything; nobody quoted here thinks the rite is empty. The difference is real, honoured brothers hold each side, and the full argument — with far more room than a type page can give it — is a page of its own.
Water BaptismThe whole argument Peter's sentence opens, at full length and with every position given its holders.There is much of our gospel duty and privilege to be seen in Noah's preservation in the ark. The apostle makes it a type of our baptism, that is, our Christianity, 1 Pet. iii. It is our great duty, in obedience to the gospel call, by a lively faith in Christ, to come into that way of salvation which God has provided for poor sinners.
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710Puritan
Genesis 7:16
Notice what Henry does there. He is commenting on Genesis, and he reaches forward to 1 Peter 3 himself to say who made the ark a type. Bede does the same from the other end, reading the sealing of the door as the Church’s security rather than Noah’s.
But the Lord sealed the ark from the outside, because He always protects His Church, which rejoices in the washing of sacred baptism, with heavenly defense, so that none of those whom He has predestined to life may perish in any way, and He protects …
Bede· Commentary on Genesis (Hexaemeron), 735Church Father
Genesis 7:16
What Jesus Made of It
— Matthew 24:37-39 — and He draws out something most retellings do notJesus uses the days of Noah for one purpose: to describe the timing of His coming. And the details He picks are worth slowing down over. Eating. Drinking. Marrying. Giving in marriage. Not one of those is a sin. The commentators are careful about this and so should we be — what the passage draws out is people going on with ordinary life, right up to the day Noah went in, and not knowing.
The wickedness of that generation is real and Genesis says so loudly. It is simply not the thing Jesus is pointing at in these three verses.
For as in the days that were before the flood,.... Not all the days before the flood, from the creation of the world; but those immediately preceding it, a century or two before it: they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage: not that these civil actions of life were criminal in themselves, had care been taken that they were not abused.
John Gill· Exposition of the New Testament, 1746-1748Particular Baptist
Matthew 24:38
As it was in the days of Noah, so will it be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark. And they were oblivious, until the flood came and swept them all away. So will it be at the coming of the Son of Man.Ordinary life, right up to the day he entered the ark — and they knew nothing until the flood came.
By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in godly fear built an ark to save his family. By faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.Faith's own use: Noah believed a warning about things not yet seen, and built.
if He did not spare the ancient world when He brought the flood on its ungodly people, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, among the eight;Peter's other mention: Noah as a preacher of righteousness, and eight people spared.
Join "by faith" with "prepared an ark" (1Pe 3:20). by the which--faith. condemned the world--For since he believed and was saved, so might they have believed and been saved, so that their condemnation by God is by his case shown to be just. righteousness which is by faith--Greek, "according to faith." A Pauline thought.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, 1871Reformed
Hebrews 11:7
The artwork
Brueghel fills the foreground with animals and leaves the ark small and pale in the distance, half-hidden by trees. It is an odd choice for a painting named after the ark, and it is exactly the note Matthew 24 strikes: the world in the front of the picture is going about its business, in colour and detail and noise, and the thing that matters is the quiet shape at the back that almost nobody is looking at yet.
Jan Brueghel the Younger, The Entry of the Animals into Noah's Ark — Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Where Genesis Says Nothing
— named as silence, and not filled inThree things this page will not pretend. Genesis never explains the one door. Genesis never says the pitch means anything. Genesis never interprets the measurements. Each of those has a long and often lovely history of Christian reading behind it — and every one of those readings is a reader’s, not the text’s.
That matters for the page’s own honesty. The typology here is strong precisely because the part that is inspired is stated by an apostle in so many words. Piling devotional detail on top of it does not make it stronger; it makes it harder to tell which part is which.
A word observation, with its limit stated
The Hebrew word for the ark’s waterproofing — kopher — is glossed “pitch” at Genesis 6:14 and nowhere else. Every other place that same number appears on the word floor, it is glossed a ransom: Exodus 30:12, Numbers 35:31 and 32, Psalm 49:7, Job 33:24, Proverbs 13:8.
That is a fact about a word, and it is worth a reader knowing. It is not a claim that Genesis intends the second sense here, and this page does not make that claim. Both halves belong in the same breath.
Read Further
— the writers quoted above, in their own hands — and where Marcus landsAmong modern teachers, Chuck Misslerworked Noah and the ark as deliberate Christology rather than as a children’s story, and his survey Learn the Bible in 24 Hours is where a reader can hear him do it in his own words.
Two subjects are deliberately absent. The scientific arguments about the flood, and the identity of the sons of God in Genesis 6, are handled on the pages that own them. A type page that reached for them would be duplicating two better treatments and diluting its own.
Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament
John Wesley · 1755
The source of this page's lead quotation on 1 Peter 3:21, where Wesley draws the sign-and-grace distinction himself in one sentence.
READ IT FREE AT CCEL →City of God, Book 15
Augustine of Hippo · 426
The most famous reading of the ark's proportions in Christian literature. Read it as what it is — a Father reading, gloriously, past what Genesis says.
READ IT FREE AT CCEL →Commentary on the Bible
Adam Clarke · 1832
For the Hebrew behind the vessel, including the point that the same word carries the infant Moses down the Nile.
READ IT FREE AT CCEL →