Genesis 6:9-22 - Noah the Engineer Gets Requirements for an Ark
13 So God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth.
As I wrote in Genesis 6:9-12 - Destroying All Mankind… Adam’s descendants that is… except the righteous ones, all refers to all the evil descendants of Adam. The reason for using “all”, when God clearly did not mean Noah and his family, is that God separated them from those to whom God referred. The statement must have been a shock to Noah, having been a comforter his entire life (Gen. 5:29). After all, a comforter will want to rescue them, evil or not. But, God went on…
14 So make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out. 15 This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high. 16 Make a roof for it and finish the ark to within 18 inches of the top. Put a door in the side of the ark and make lower, middle and upper decks.
This must have surprised Noah. I mean really. Are all those people going to fit on an ark? But God wasn’t done…
17 I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish.
“Huh?” Noah could have been thinking, “Then why an ark? Am I going to die, too?”
18 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.
“Oookkayyyyy… no one else? That’s a big ark for just us.” Well, I’d be thinking it! I think Noah may have been an engineer!
19 You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you.
“Can you be more specific?” Noah asked. Well, not really, but it’s easy to project here. As an engineer by trade, I always doubt when such simple statements mean what they sound like. But who else besides an engineer would God ask to build an ark to specs? Engineers also like blatant honesty… about their work I mean. But I may actually be on to something, because in fact, God clarifies verse 19…
20 Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive.
Yeah. I bet! Okay then. The ark needs to hold all the animals. Not every animal there is, just every kind. Okay. Now, his mind would go to the details, such as feeding them. Noah doesn’t interrupt however, and God readily addresses his concern…
21 You are to take every kind of food that is to be eaten and store it away as food for you and for them.
Okay. Noah knows what to do. Frankly, he must have been heart broken to know that all those people were going to die. But he had lived a life of comforting evil people, as futile as it was… they were still evil. So, God saved Adam’s line from destruction through Noah, and started him off with a nice farm of animals.Â
Now, each deck was 33,750 feet. Given 3 decks, that totals 101,250 feet, or 2.3 acres. Each deck was about 15 feet high. Now, I cannot say how many animals needed to live on the ark. However, given Genesis 5’s confirmation of Genesis 1 and 2, that God created human beings to subdue the earth and **then** gave Adam life, we can carry through Genesis 5’s focus on Adam’s descendants through to Genesis 6, and worry only about the animals living around Adam’s descendants at the time of Noah. They would fit.
Notice also, more uses of absolute words like every and “the ground”. Well, the word “every” is limited in verse 20 to “the ground”, and limited in verse 21 to only the kinds of food that would be eaten on the ark. As for the “the ground”, we have already established that this refers only to the ground populated by Adam’s descendants… though we have not discussed where that ground might be. That discussion is coming!
 22 Noah did everything just as God commanded him.
In this case, I think everything means everything. Whew!