Noah's Ark and the Mishkan

           In instructing Noach to build an ark, God specified the structure’s precise dimensions – 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, and 30 cubits tall (6:15).  The only other time in the Torah where we find God commanding the building of a structure in particular dimensions is, of course, in Sefer Shemot, when God commands Benei Yisrael to build the Mishkan and its furnishings in precise measurements.  Additionally, these two contexts mark the only instances in the Torah where we find the phrase “mi-bayit u-mi’chutz” (“inside and out”) – Noach is instructed to apply pitch on both sides of the ark (6:14), and the ark was plated with gold in its interior and exterior (Shemot 25:11).  Noach’s ark had a special roof at the top (“ve-el ama tekhalena mi-l’mala” – 6:16), and the ark in the Mishkanwas covered by the kaporet.  The ark protected Noach and his family during the forty days of the flood, which may perhaps be seen as a parallel to the forty days Moshe spent atop Mount Sinai before the Mishkan’s construction (Shemot 24:18).

            The Mishkan (and later the Temple), and the aron in particular, was the place where God concentrated His presence on earth.  As King Shelomo famously proclaimed at the dedication of the Mikdash (Melakhim I 8:27), God’s presence transcends the physical world and obviously cannot be confined within any structure, but He nevertheless chose to symbolically reside among us in the Temple.  The human parallel to the Temple is Noach’s ark, where all of humanity was confined during the period of the deluge.  Just as God’s infinite presence was, in some way, concentrated within the walls of the inner chamber of the Temple, similarly, all of humankind existed within the walls of the ark during the flood.

            The obvious difference between the two structures, however, lies in the fact that one was temporary and the other was meant to be permanent.  As we learn from the other major incident recorded in Parashat Noach – the story of Migdal Bavel – humanity is not meant to be concentrated and confined to one location.  People are meant to “fill the earth,” as God commanded Noach and his family immediately after the flood.  The confinement in the ark was a temporary measure necessitated by the flood, and in no way represented the ideal condition of humanity.  God’s symbolic “confinement” in the Mikdash, by contrast, is indeed the ideal relationship between the Almighty and His people, and it is only because of our unworthiness that this condition, too, proved to be temporary.

(Based on an article by Rav Amnon Bazak)