Genesis 6:16
Thou shalt make a window in the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish the top of it: and the door of the ark thou shalt set in the side: with lower, middle chambers, and third stories shalt thou make it.
Open Genesis 6:16 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →In the palace
The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Fenestram in arca facies, et in cubito consummabis summitatem ejus : ostium autem arcæ pones ex latere ; deorsum, cœnacula et tristega facies in ea.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- ἐπισυνάγων ποιήσεις τὴν κιβωτόν, καὶ εἰς πῆχυν συντελέσεις αὐτὴν ἄνωθεν· τὴν δὲ θύραν τῆς κιβωτοῦ ποιήσεις ἐκ πλαγίων· κατάγαια διώροφα καὶ τριώροφα ποιήσεις αὐτήν. ⸆
- Hebrew (WLC)
- צֹ֣הַר תַּֽעֲשֶׂ֣ה לַתֵּבָ֗ה וְאֶל אַמָּה֙ תְּכַלֶ֣נָּה מִלְמַ֔עְלָה וּפֶ֥תַח הַתֵּבָ֖ה בְּצִדָּ֣הּ תָּשִׂ֑ים תַּחְתִּיִּ֛ם שְׁנִיִּ֥ם וּשְׁלִשִׁ֖ים תַּֽעֲשֶֽׂהָ
Haydock's commentary
In a cubit. This is understood by some, of the height of the window; by others, of the roof, which would be almost flat, like the top of a coach. Menoch supposes, that the whole ark was to be measured with the cubit in every part, from the bottom to the top; and the words of it, properly refer to the ark.
Side, or at the end, about the middle way, that the animals might be conveyed easily to their stalls. The door would open into the story allotted to the beasts, and all things might enter it by a sort of bridge, or by sloping planks. (Calmet)
Ordure might be thrown down into the lowest part of the ark, separated from the reservoir of fresh water, or might be brought up with ropes and buckets to the window at the top, which would easily open. (Tirinus)
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
St Augustine Lectures or Tractates on the Gospel According to St. John, Chapter XIX. 31-42, and XX. 1-9
2. “Then came the soldiers, and brake the legs of the first, and of the other who was crucified with Him. But when they came to Jesus, and saw that He was dead already, they brake not His legs: but one of the soldiers with a spear laid open His side, and forthwith came there out blood and water.” A suggestive word was made use of by the evangelist, in not saying pierced, or wounded His side, or anything else, but “opened;” that thereby, in a sense, the gate of life might be thrown open, from whence have flowed forth the sacraments of the Church, without which there is no entrance to the life which is the true life. That blood was shed for the remission of sins; that water it is that makes up the health-giving cup, and supplies at once the laver of baptism and water for drinking. …
St Ambrose On the Duties of the Clergy, Chapter XVIII. On the different functions of modesty. How it should qualify both speech and silence, accompany chastity, commend our prayers to God, govern our bodily motions; on which last point reference is made to two clerics in language by no means unsuited to its object. Further he proceeds to say that one's gait should be in accordance with that same virtue, and how careful one must be that nothing immodest come forth from one's mouth, or be noticed in one's body. All these points are illustrated with very appropriate examples
78. Is not nature herself then a teacher of modesty? Following her example, the modesty of men, which I suppose is so called from the mode of knowing what is seemly, has covered and veiled what it has found hid in the frame of our body; like that door which Noah was bidden to make in the side of the ark; wherein we find a figure of the Church, and also of the human body, for through that door the remnants of food were cast out. Thus the Maker of our nature so thought of our modesty, and so guarded what was seemly and virtuous in our body, as to place what is unseemly behind, and to put it out of the sight of our eyes. …