This page was migrated in August 2022 from my older website, biblicalambiguities.net.
5 August 2022 Navigate 'up to the Genesis index: index-genesis.
A ṣohar you shall make for to ark, and to a cubit you shall finish it from above, and you shall place an entrance in its side. Lower, second, and third [stories] you shall make.
It is not clear what a ṣohar is. One theory, based its similarity of appearance to ṣohorayim "noon-day", is that it is a window to illuminate the ark. There are no other instances of ṣohar in the Bible, though, so such a theory is too weak a support to be sure.
Another theory is that it refers to the slope along the top of the ark: that is, that the ark had a gently sloped roof, where the middle was a cubit higher than the edges. That 1 cubit of drop over 15 feet of roof would be enough for rainwater to pour quickly off the ark rather than forming, say, puddles up there.
On the window theory, "to a cubit you shall finish it from above" is generally taken to mean that the top of the window would be flush with the top of the ark. The window would then extent along the top of the ark, maybe all the way around, interrupted here and there by beams. But if we don't know for sure what a ṣohar is, it's hard to be very specific about the measurements involved in its construction.
Where the Masoretic Text reads "to a cubit" (Hebrew el-ama), Kittel suggests that we should perhaps read to its width (Hebrew el-arka). Alternately, instead of el-amma tekallennah ("to a cubit you shall finish it"), Kittel suggests that we should perhaps read al-amma tegullennu, but I must confess ignorance as to what tegullennu might mean.
As with other pages migrated from biblicalambiguities.net, this page may contain material paraphrased or even outright copied without direct attribution from a limited set of public domain resources described at biblicalambiguities-general-disclaimer and biblicalambiguities-translation-disclaimer.
This page is released under the CC0 1.0 license.