{"author":null,"canonical_references":[],"database_sha256":"8cfbe7284c6936871d57c02dc6aa63ebbdfd4722422d539dd9f716e46e91112e","date_end":null,"date_start":null,"edition_year":null,"id":"sermonindex-ecf-6336","native_reference":{"book_number":10,"chapter_from":6,"chapter_to":6,"system":"MyBible module coordinates (mapping unverified)","verse_from":15,"verse_to":15},"public_import_allowed":false,"record_kind":"verse-keyed-module-record","review_required":["English edition and exact text","author/work attribution","dating","verse mapping and citation kind","reuse and attribution","split author quotations and deduplicate"],"review_status":"unreviewed","source_html":"<p><b>Bede</b>: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, its width fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits. The length of the ark signifies the long-suffering patience by which adversities are bravely endured; the width signifies the breadth of charity, which embraces even those who inflict adversities; the height signifies the sublimity of hope, by which the eternal reward in heaven is insinuated. Hence the length of the ark is commanded to be three hundred cubits, as this number, as we have previously noted, is represented by the letter T in Greek. This letter is written in the shape of a cross, because the holy Church, while remaining invincible and steadfast amid adversities, follows the footsteps of the Lord's passion, remembering His word where He said: And he who does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me (Matthew 10:38). The width extends to fifty cubits, in which number the Holy Spirit is sent, and under the law universal rest and remission are bestowed upon God's people because the love of God is poured into our hearts, not by the merit of our actions but by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. And this is rest and remission of our debts, when we love God with all our heart, all our soul, all our strength, and our neighbor in God as ourselves, and our adversary for the sake of God. The height is thirty cubits, because this is the only and unique hope of the elect, that through the observation of the Decalogue, which is perfected in the love of God and neighbor, they ascend to the contemplation of the Holy Trinity. For three times ten makes thirty.<br/><i>— Commentary on Genesis (Hexaemeron)</i></p><p><b>Bede</b>: There is, however, another memorable mystery in the shape of the ark, which is found to be formed according to the measure of the human body. For the length of the human body from the top of the head to the feet is six times the height from one side to the other, and ten times the height measured from the back to the abdomen, as if you measure a lying man supine or prone; the length from head to feet is six times as long as the width from right to left or left to right, and ten times as high from the ground. Therefore, the ark was made three hundred cubits in length, fifty in width, and thirty in height; and because the Apostle says of the Church that it is one body and one spirit in Christ, rightly the ark, which bore the figure of this, was formed in the likeness of the human body, because Christ Himself, God, and our Lord willed to be incarnated for us and to wash us from sins and consecrate us through the sacraments of His humanity. Rightly, He commanded that the ark, in which He decreed to save the remnants of the human race while the wicked perished, be made in the manner of the human body, just as the temple which Solomon made for the Lord not only prefigured His Church, but also His flesh itself, which He took from the Virgin, as He Himself testified when He said to the Jews, \"Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.\" The evangelist said this, meaning the temple of His body (John 2:19). Thus also, the ark, which Noah made in the form of the human body, held our type, of whom the Apostle said, \"Until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood\" (Ephesians 4:13); and of the Lord Himself, who deigned to gather us into the unity of faith through the mystery of His Incarnation and to cleanse us from sins by the grace of the Holy Spirit, which the dove bringing the olive branch to the ark symbolized, and to save us from the destruction of the perishing world.<br/><i>— Commentary on Genesis (Hexaemeron)</i></p><p><b>Origen of Alexandria</b>: After these things mention is made of the length and breadth of the ark and of the height, and certain numbers are set down in them, consecrated with mighty mysteries. But before we discuss the numbers, let us see what sort of thing it is that it speaks of length and breadth and height. The Apostle in a certain place, when he was speaking more sacredly of the mystery of the cross, says thus: \"that you may know what is the length and breadth and depth.\" Now depth and height signify the same thing, only that height seems to measure the space from the lower parts to the upper, but depth to begin from the upper parts and descend to the lower. Consequently, then, the Spirit of God, both through Moses and through Paul, sets forth figures of mighty mysteries. For Paul, since he was preaching the mystery of Christ's descent, named depth, as of one coming from the upper parts to the lower; but Moses, because he designates the restoration of those who through Christ are called back from the destruction and perdition of the world — as it were from the death of the flood — from the lower parts to the things above and heavenly, in the measure of the ark does not mention depth, but height, as where one ascends from earthly and lowly things to heavenly and lofty ones. Numbers too are set down: three hundred cubits of length, fifty of breadth, thirty of height. Three hundred is three times a hundred, and the number one hundred is shown to be full in all things and perfect, and containing the mystery of the whole rational creation, as we read in the Gospels, where it says that \"a certain man having a hundred sheep, when one of them had perished, leaving the ninety-nine in the mountains, went down to seek the one that had perished, and, when he had found it, carried it back on his shoulders, and placed it with those ninety-nine which had not perished.\" This hundred, then, being the number of the whole rational creation, since it does not subsist from itself, but descends from the Trinity and has received length of life — that is, the grace of immortality — from the Father through the Son and the Holy Spirit, is therefore set down tripled, inasmuch as it is increased to perfection through the grace of the Trinity, and so that it may restore into three hundred the one who has fallen from the hundred through ignorance, by the acknowledgment of the Trinity. The breadth holds the number fifty, which number is consecrated to remission and pardon. For according to the law, in the fiftieth year there was remission — that is, that if anyone had sold away a possession, he should receive it back; if a free man had come into servitude, he should receive back his freedom; the debtor should receive pardon, the exile should return to his fatherland. The spiritual Noah, therefore, Christ, in His ark, in which He frees the human race from destruction — that is, in His Church — has placed this number fifty of remission in the breadth. For unless He had granted the remission of sins to those who believe, the breadth of the Church would not have been spread throughout the circle of the earth. But the number thirty of the height contains a mystery similar to the three hundred. For what a hundred does there, ten multiplied by three does here. But the sum of the whole construction is brought back to one, because \"there is one God the Father, from whom are all things, and one Lord,\" and \"the faith of the Church is one, one baptism, one body and one spirit,\" and all things hasten to the one end of God's perfection. But you too, who hear these things, if you attend to the holy Scriptures in your leisure, will find very many deeds of great matters contained under the number thirty or fifty. At thirty years of age Joseph is brought out of prison and receives the sovereignty of all Egypt, that by divine foresight he might drive off the ruin of the impending famine. Jesus is related to be of thirty years when He came to the baptism and \"saw the heavens divided and the Spirit of God coming upon Himself in the likeness of a dove\"; where also the mystery of the Trinity first began to be disclosed; and many things similar to these you will find. But you will also find the fiftieth day as a feast in the consecration of the new fruits, and from the spoils of the Midianites a fiftieth is taken off as a first-portion for the Lord. And with three hundred you will find both Abraham conquering the Sodomites, and Gideon with three hundred lapping the water with the tongue overcomes. Indeed, the door, which is placed not in the front nor from above, but from the side, crosswise — since it is the time of divine anger (for \"the day of the Lord is a day of wrath and fury,\" as it is written; for although some may seem to be saved, yet many, whom their own merits reprove, are destroyed and perish) — the door is set crosswise, so that that may be shown which is said through the prophet, that \"if you walk perversely with me, I too will walk with you in perverse anger.\" After these things let us also see about that which it says separately, \"the lower parts double-chambered\" and \"the upper parts triple-chambered,\" lest perhaps that be indicated through these things which the Apostle said, that \"in the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, of things heavenly, earthly, and infernal,\" and in the ark there may be signified that the lower parts themselves are of all those things which the Apostle calls infernal, but the upper parts adjoining these are the earthly things themselves, and the triple-chambered upper parts, of which he speaks, are all together the heavenly things, but that in these the merits of those are distinguished who are able, according to the Apostle Paul, to ascend \"up to the third heaven.\" And the many nests, because many of them are made in the ark, indicate that there are many dwellings with the Father. But concerning the animals and beasts and cattle and the other diverse living creatures, what other figure is to be kept by us than that which either Isaiah shows, when he says that in the kingdom of Christ the wolf with the lamb, the leopard with the kid, the lion and the ox go together to the pastures, and their offspring together feed on chaff, and moreover that a little child — such without doubt as the Savior spoke of: \"unless you are converted and become like this child, you shall not enter into the kingdom of God\" — will put his hand into the den of asps and be in no way harmed? Or even that figure which Peter teaches to be had even now in the Church, when he relates that he saw a vision, in which all the four-footed beasts and beasts of the earth and birds of heaven were contained within one linen of faith, bound at the beginnings of the four Gospels?<br/><i>— HOMILIES ON Genesis 2.5</i></p><p><b>Origen of Alexandria</b>: But although all these things have been composed with such great skill, certain people raise questions as objections, and especially Apelles, who was indeed a disciple of Marcion, but the inventor of another heresy rather than of the one which he received from his master. He then, while he desires to represent that the writings of Moses contain in themselves nothing of divine wisdom and nothing of the work of the Holy Spirit, exaggerates sayings of this kind and says that it could in no way have come about that so small a space could have held so many kinds of animals and their foods, which would suffice through a whole year. For since \"two by two\" of the unclean animals — that is, two males and two females (for this is what the repeated word indicates) — but \"seven by seven,\" which is seven pairs, of the clean, are said to have been led into the ark, how, he asks, could this space that is written of have come about, so as to be able to hold at least four elephants alone? And after he opposes it in this manner through the individual species, he adds over all things in these words: it is established, therefore, that the tale is a fiction; and if this is so, it is established that this writing is not from God. But to these things we will bring to the notice of our hearers the things which we have learned from prudent men and those acquainted with the Hebrew traditions and from the ancient teachers. Our predecessors said, then, that Moses, who, as Scripture testifies concerning him, \"had been instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians,\" set down the number of cubits in this place according to the geometric art in which the Egyptians are especially skilled. For among geometers, according to that reckoning which among them is called \"power,\" from a solid and a square either one is reckoned as six cubits, if taken generally, or as three hundred, if it is reduced in detail. And if this reckoning is indeed observed, in the measure of this ark there will be found such great spaces both of length and of breadth as could truly hold the seeds of the whole world to be restored and the reviving seed-plots of all living creatures. Let these things, so far as pertains to the reckoning of the narrative, be said against those who strive to attack the writings of the Old Testament as though they contained certain impossible and irrational things.<br/><i>— HOMILIES ON Genesis 2.2</i></p><p><b>Augustine of Hippo</b>: THE CAPACITY OF NOAH’S ARK. — It is also asked how, with its dimensions as described, the Ark of Noah could contain all the animals that entered it, and their food. This question was resolved by Origen (Hom. 2 in Gen.) by means of geometrical cubits; for he argued that Scripture does not say without reason that Moses was adorned with all the wisdom of the Egyptians, (Acts 7:22) who had in great esteem in geometry. The geometrical cubit, according to Origen, is equal to six of our cubits. Now, taking this great measure as the basis of our calculation, there is no problem in admitting that the ark was of sufficient capacity to contain all this. [<br/><i>— QUESTIONS ON GENESIS, Q. 3 (tr. J. 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