Answering Questions
Raised by the Novel

SPOILER ALERT! Many of the answers to questions in this section reveal key points in the storyline of the novel. If you have not read the story first, some of these details will spoil important events in the book.

Would animals fear man in the pre-Flood world?

In Chapter 13, Noah finally takes Emzara to see some of her favorite animals, members of the giraffe kind, which are called keluks in this series. She gets the opportunity to get close to them for a while. In our day, wild animals seldom allow people to get so close, but would things be different prior to the Flood?

After the Flood, God told Noah that “the fear of you and the dread of you shall be on every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground and on all the fish of the sea” (Genesis 9:2). The straightforward meaning of this verse is that following the Flood, animals would have a fear of man, which is something we see among most wild animals today. It seems natural to infer that they did not possess such a fear prior to the Flood, and the next verse appears to confirm this notion. Genesis 9:3 states that God originally had given plants to man for food, but now man would be permitted to eat every living thing that moves (this concept is addressed in more detail in the question and answer section of Noah: Man of Destiny). Since mankind was not permitted to eat animals until after the Flood, the animals did not need the instinct to be afraid of people. But once permission to eat meat was given, the fear of man became important for creatures to survive.

So it is quite plausible that someone like Emzara could approach a group of wild animals without causing them to run away.

Were Noah’s sons triplets?

Genesis 5:32 states that when Noah was 500 years old, he begot Shem, Ham, and Japheth. At first glance, this verse seems to indicate that the sons were triplets, or possibly a set of twins with the other son also being born within Noah’s 500th year. While some Christians interpret this verse as teaching that Noah’s sons were triplets, the Bible provides further details that make such an interpretation unlikely, if not impossible. Instead, it makes much more sense to understand the verse as stating that the oldest son was born in Noah’s 500th year.

This verse appears at the end of a genealogy describing the people in the line from Adam to Noah. Genesis 11 includes a similar genealogy, but this time it moves from Shem down to Terah and his sons. Of particular relevance here is the fact that Genesis 11:26 states, “When Terah had lived 70 years, he fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran.” While the names and number of years are different, the pattern is the same as Genesis 5:32. When we look at other passages in Scripture, such as Acts 7:4 and Genesis 12:4, we learn that Terah’s sons were not triplets because Abram was born when Terah was 130 years old. So it seems that this type of statement in a genealogy merely conveys how old the father was when the oldest of the named sons was born. Also, notice that Abram was not the oldest. Instead, the son most relevant to the book’s subject matter is often listed first in these genealogies.

Other clues in Genesis reveal that Noah’s sons were not triplets. The oldest was born in Noah’s 500th year and the Flood was in his 600th year. In Genesis 11:10, we read that Shem had a son when he was 100 years old, and that this took place two years after the Flood. So Shem must have been about two years younger than his older brother, Japheth. Japheth would have been 100 at the time of the Flood, and Shem would have been 100 years old two years later, or possibly three years later if “after the Flood” in Genesis 11:10 is meant to refer to the time after the family exited the Ark. Either way, the boys were not the same age. We cannot be sure of Ham’s age, but we do know that he was the youngest of Noah’s sons (Genesis 9:24). In our story, we made him about ten years younger than Japheth.

There is some debate about whether Japheth was older than Shem due to plausible interpretations of Genesis 10:21. In this verse, some Bible translations identify Shem as “the brother of Japheth the elder” (KJV, NKJV, NIV) while several others describe Shem as the older brother of Japheth (NASB, NET, ESV, CSB). Based on the way the same Hebrew construction is translated elsewhere in the Old Testament, it seems that the latter option is a more natural way to render this verse. However, if Shem were the oldest and born when Noah was 502 or 503, how could Genesis 5:32 state that Noah was 500 when the first of his sons was born? Those who favor Shem as the oldest generally see Noah’s age as being a round number. But this would be inconsistent with the precision used throughout the rest of Genesis 5 when describing the age of each father at the birth of his son of record.

There is some legitimate debate over this issue, so Christians should hold their own view tentatively. For the story, we decided to make Japheth the oldest. While this is a questionable way to interpret Genesis 10:21 it makes better sense of other factors. Noah’s age at the birth of his first son is not simply a round number; thus, this position understands the ages in Genesis 5 consistently. Also, it fits with a common theme found throughout Genesis: the younger son often takes precedent over the oldest. Consider the following sets of brothers and think about which one becomes more important in the text: Cain or Seth, Haran or Abram, Ishmael or Isaac, Esau or Jacob, Reuben or Judah (or Joseph). Finally, if Shem is not the oldest, then Genesis 5:32 is consistent with Genesis 11:26 in listing first the most relevant son instead of the oldest.

How old was Cain when he murdered Abel and who was he afraid of?

In Chapter 19, Methuselah spoke about Cain and Abel, filling in some of the biblical backstory for Noah and his group. Most people tend to think of Cain and Abel as teenagers or twentysomethings when the murder occurred, but the Bible gives several clues indicating that they were likely much older than that, perhaps even 100 years older.

Genesis 4:25 explains that Eve gave birth to another son, Seth, and it is pretty clear that she viewed him as a replacement for Abel. She said, “God has appointed for me another offspring instead of Abel, for Cain killed him.” In Genesis 5:3, we learn that this happened when Adam was 130 years old, and that Seth was just one of many other children that Adam and Eve had. Since Seth was viewed as Abel’s replacement, then he was almost certainly the next son born to them after Abel’s death. This means that Abel would have been murdered nearly 130 years after Adam was created. And if Cain was born within the first few years of Adam and Eve being banished from the garden, then Cain could have been over 120 years old at the murder of Abel. We have no reason to think that it would have taken very long for Eve to conceive since God created Adam and Eve with perfectly functioning bodies, and He instructed them to be fruitful and multiply. Genesis 4 and 5 show us that they certainly did that.

If Cain and Abel were over 100 years old at the time of Abel’s murder, then we can solve another question that has puzzled Bible readers: why was Cain worried that someone might find and kill him? As we explained in the non-fiction section of the first book of this trilogy, Noah: Man of Destiny, brother would have originally married sister in the first generation after Adam. If Cain and Abel were as young as many people assume, then there would not have been any other people in the world for him to fear. But if he were nearly 130 years old, there could have been plenty of people who might have sought to avenge Abel’s death. Abel may have already been married with many adult children and possibly even grandchildren and great grandchildren. This scenario is portrayed in the novel, as one of the Ark’s passengers happens to be a descendant of Abel. Also, if Cain and Abel had other siblings at this time, those siblings may have also been tempted to go after Cain.

You may recall from the non-fiction section of Noah: Man of Destiny that some Christians have proposed that God created other people apart from Adam and Eve, but this contradicts the clear teaching of the Bible that Eve was the mother of all living (Genesis 3:20). They think this solves the issue of Cain’s wife and explains who he would have been afraid of, but it does nothing of the sort. Cain’s fear is based on the possibility of retaliation, and the people who might want to retaliate would be those who knew the victim. If God created other people somewhere in the world unrelated to Adam and Eve, as is supposed by some, then why would these individuals be upset with Cain for killing someone that they had probably never heard of?

Why did you depict the cherubim at the Garden of Eden the way you did?

Dealing with the cherubim at the Garden of Eden required us to make numerous important decisions. What should we call them? What did they look like? How should they behave? How should they speak? How much do they know and how much could they tell Noah? This section will explain our rationale behind why we portrayed the cherubim the way we did.

Genesis 3:24 states that God drove Adam out “and He placed cherubim at the east of the garden of Eden, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life” (NKJV). The Bible mentions cherubim being placed at the east side of the garden along with a flaming sword. Notice that the text does not say that the cherubim wielded the sword. Instead, it states the flaming sword turned every way to guard the tree of life. Also, cherubim is the masculine plural form of cherub, so there were at least two of these entities. In our story, we stationed two cherubim at the east side of the garden, and we had the sword protect the rest of it.

Readers may have noticed that we never referred to them as cherubim or angels in the book. The reason for this is that we wanted to think of what someone without the text of Genesis might have called them. How much did Noah know about angels? Was he aware of the many different types of heavenly beings described in Scripture? In the second book, Noah: Man of Resolve, Noah and Tubal-Cain discussed their thoughts about the existence of spiritual beings, but they had only a very limited understanding of them. Since we gave Noah a very restricted knowledge of angelic beings, we decided that he would not even know what they were actually called. So in the book, the cherubim are most often referred to as guardians since that describes their function at the garden.

For their appearance, we had several options in Scripture to choose from. When Solomon built the temple, the inner sanctuary boasted cherubim made of olive wood. They are described in 1 Kings 6:26 as being ten cubits tall. We know this passage is merely describing the height of the cherubim depicted in the temple, but we decided to make the living beings at the garden the same height. Also, such height would certainly make them extremely intimidating to Naamah’s army.

The Book of Ezekiel includes a few descriptions of cherubim that make them seem rather bizarre. The term cherub does not appear in the first chapter, but by comparing the description and role of the creatures in the first chapter with those called cherubim in chapter 10, we can be quite certain they are the same types of beings. Chapter 1 describes them as having feet like those of a calf (v. 7) and four wings, each with human-like hands under them (v. 8). Verse 10 also explains that each of them had four faces: the face of a man, the face of a lion, the face of an ox, and the face of an eagle. Incidentally, the line about the feet of a calf is the main reason many portrayals of Satan show him with hooves (many Christians believe he is referred to as the “anointed cherub” in Ezekiel 28:13–14).

There are other places in the Bible that discuss cherubim while making no mention of them having four faces or calves’ feet. For example, Ezekiel 41:18 mentions cherubim with two faces (man and lion). In the story, we gave the cherubim four wings, but we chose not to give them four faces or calves’ feet. Part of the reason for this is that we wanted the guardians to focus straight ahead, so Noah would not have been able to see each of the four faces. And we did not want to introduce this idea during the battle at the garden because it would have been confusing for the reader.

For their behavior and speech, we used other angels in Scripture as our model. One of the angels mentioned that they were fellow servants of God with Noah. These words echo what John was told by an angel in both Revelation 19:10 and 22:9. The Bible also indicates that angels are limited in knowledge, so in our story they could not answer all of Noah’s questions. They only knew what God had permitted them to know, and encouraged Noah to believe that the Most High would do what is right. We wanted them to be firm yet compassionate toward Noah, but unyielding and intimidating toward the Havilite army. At the same time, they urged Naamah to turn to the Creator, borrowing words from an angel in Revelation 14:7, and appealed to the one tender spot we have seen from her: Tubal-Cain.

How did you decide when certain characters would die?

One of the challenges in writing this series has been to keep it exciting and suspenseful even though most readers would know that only eight people would be alive at the end. This means that some of the characters we enjoy will not survive. Readers had to say goodbye to Ara, Aterre, Tubal-Cain, and others in the second novel. In this book, everyone except for Noah and his family perished. Readers who have been through the Ark Encounter and remember the names given to the women there may have immediately recognized Noah’s daughters-in-law in the story as soon as they were first mentioned.

Since many of the characters were fictitious, we had freedom regarding their deaths. However, two of the characters had to die at appointed times because Scripture tells us how long they lived. Noah’s father Lamech died five years before the Flood, and Methuselah passed away in the same year as the Flood. It is possible that he died in the Flood, but most Christians do not like that idea. So to avoid frustrating readers, we had Methuselah die about a month before the Flood.

This brings up an important issue to address. Many Christians have been taught that Methuselah’s name means something like “when he dies, judgment.” This is how Henry Morris defined it in The Genesis Record, although he was a bit tentative. People who follow this line of thinking believe Enoch, being a prophet, essentially uttered a prophecy about the Flood when he named his son. Some people have even claimed that when one combines the meanings of the ten names from Adam to Noah they spell out a message of redemption. However, this idea is full of problems in that the names often do not mean what has been claimed. For example, I could not find a single Hebrew lexicon that gives a meaning to Methuselah’s name that has something to do with judgment. It seems that his name might be related to a dart or javelin, which is why the Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon gives a plausible definition as “man of the dart.” We knew Methuselah needed to die in the same year as the Flood, but we also did not want to give credence to the idea that his name was prophetic, so we had him die about a month before the onset of the Flood.

Why did you describe the pitch as coming from trees instead of bitumen?

The early chapters of Genesis mention tar or bitumen on two occasions. The builders of the city and Tower of Babel used bitumen for mortar between their bricks (Genesis 11:3). And Genesis 14:10 describes the Valley of Siddim as being full of bitumen pits. Many people have assumed that Noah would have used something like this to coat the interior and exterior of the Ark per God’s command in Genesis 6:14. A petroleum-based substance like bitumen might work for preserving and sealing a wooden ship. However, it is unlikely that Noah would have used such a material because much of the petroleum-based substances we know today are likely a result of the huge amount of biotic material buried during the Flood.

Pine-derived tar was often used to preserve the wood that made sailing ships prior to the advent of iron and steel ships. Since Noah used an extraordinary amount of wood to construct the Ark, it makes sense that he would have used a tree-based tar or resin for pitch, especially if gopherwood produced the sticky substance.

Why didn’t you show more of the Ark being built?

It might seem strange to some readers that in a book about Noah we only spent a few chapters showing the family working on the Ark. This was not an oversight on our part; it was a conscious decision to keep such descriptions to a minimum. While it is true that the Ark’s construction was extremely important and undoubtedly took up many years in Noah’s life, reading a story about the Ark’s construction would likely be quite boring. This novel needed to span 100 years in Noah’s life, from the time when he and his wife were expecting their first son to the onset of the Flood. Since we needed to make significant leaps in the timeline, the natural places for those were during the Ark’s construction. Still, we included some planning and details throughout those chapters to keep the Ark in constant focus and to connect with ideas displayed at the Ark Encounter, from animal enclosures to systems for collecting fresh water and much more.

How many people worked on the Ark?

The Bible does not necessarily tell us how many people built the Ark. Hebrews 11:7 says that Noah built the Ark for the saving of his household, and we know that only eight people were on it during the Flood. Did Noah build it by himself or did only eight people work on the Ark? We cannot know the answer with any certainty, or as I like to say, “We just don’t Noah.” Sorry, bad pun.

Given that Noah apparently had a maximum of 50–75 years to work on the project, it is certainly plausible that his small group could have built the Ark (see non-fiction section of Noah: Man of Resolve for details on how long it took Noah to build the Ark). However, it is also possible that many others were involved in the work. As we have seen, Noah’s father died five years before the Flood and his grandfather died in the same year the Flood started. If they lived near Noah, then they might have helped him build it. Noah could have also had many other family members and friends helping, and he might have even hired construction workers. The Bible does not preclude any of those possibilities.

In our story, we kept the number of people to a relatively small group of 15: Noah, Emzara, Japheth, Rayneh, Shem, Ar’yel, Ham, Kezia, Lamech, Methuselah, Purlek, Evet, Elam, Garun, and Laleel. We also had Noah purchase supplies and goods from Jabal’s group, so technically there were others involved in the work.

Does the Ark in the book match the design of the Ark at the Ark Encounter?

The way we described the exterior of the Ark in the novel matches the design seen at the Ark Encounter. However, the Ark’s interior is laid out differently than what guests experience when they visit the theme park. Keep in mind that the massive Ark in Williamstown, Kentucky, built to the biblical dimensions, was made to accommodate thousands of visitors every day, so it has wide walkways, a huge ramp system with a gentle slope for wheelchairs and powered carts, emergency exit stairwells, restrooms on each deck, and dozens of world-class exhibits.

The Ark described in the book follows the design of the Half-Ark Model seen on the first deck of the Ark Encounter. This model was made to show what Noah’s Ark might have looked like on the inside, taking into account all of the animals, food, water, and storage needed. Narrower hallways along with smaller and steeper ramps could have been used on each deck. The family’s living quarters may have been on the second floor, which would rock less in the water compared to the third deck, and it would put the family in closer proximity to most of the animals.

Besides the design of the Ark, how well do the novels line up with what visitors see at the Ark Encounter?

For the most part, the details about Noah and his family described at the Ark Encounter are consistent with the novels. Of course, the novels go into far more detail than the signage in the themed exhibits and serve as sort of the semi-official story for the characters on the Ark. For example, the Who Was Noah? exhibit on Deck Two of the Ark Encounter is essentially an abbreviated form of these novels, from Noah’s boyhood longing to build boats to the construction of the Ark. Many of the answers given by the animatronic Noah in Noah’s Study are derived from this story. Also, the information on the signs that give a bit of backstory for each of Noah’s family members in the Living Quarters are drawn from the story told in these novels.

Some very minor differences can be found, such as the fact that the novels never have Noah wearing the hat that can he can be seen wearing at the Ark. Future exhibits at the theme park may not line up perfectly with the novels. For example, one of the future phases at the park is the Walled City, and there has been talk of placing Noah’s house within the city walls. This leads us to the next question.

Why did you have Noah move far away to build the Ark? Doesn’t the Bible teach that people mocked him while he worked?

Movies and books often depict Noah building the Ark just outside of a city. This gives him the benefit of hiring laborers and obtaining needed supplies, but it also provides the opportunity to include a healthy amount of scoffers who made fun of Noah for building the Ark.

As we have done throughout this series, we sought to go against many of the popular ideas about Noah and the Ark that are not found directly in Scripture. The reason for this is to challenge people to look closely at the Bible and base their ideas on it rather than on popular retellings of Noah. This is one reason we chose to move Noah away from a city for the Ark’s construction. While there may have been advantages for building near a city, the disadvantages might have outweighed them. For example, since the people were so violent and immoral prior to the Flood, would they have even let Noah finish building the Ark? Of course, ultimately, they could not really stop him, since God commanded him to do it, but it seems likely that some of these wicked people would have sought to destroy the Ark if they lived near it. So, by moving Noah away from populated areas in our story, he was able to build the Ark and raise his sons in a relatively safe environment. Interestingly enough, the Jewish historian Josephus stated that Noah moved away from the populace to build the Ark, but there is no way he could have known this with certainty. Since Scripture is silent on this issue, we really cannot be certain where he built it.

If you are wondering why we did not include mockers during the Ark’s construction, it is because the Bible never mentions them. People are often quite surprised, and sometimes upset, when I point this out, but it is true. The Bible never states that people made fun of Noah while he worked on the Ark. We stated this in the “Dear Reader” section at the beginning of the first book, Noah: Man of Destiny. However, it may very well have happened. Noah was a godly man living in an exceedingly ungodly world, and based on how skeptics often mock believers today, it is easy to believe that Noah would have been mocked if others were around. To account for this, we included plenty of people mocking Noah in the final chapters of the second book before he escaped Iri Geshem.

In the scene where the animals gather outside the Ark, why did you include more than two keluks (giraffe kind)?

At the Ark Encounter, we needed to answer some tough questions about the animals. One of the reasons this task was difficult is that we do not possess enough information about every type of land-dependent animal that has ever lived. With that limited information, we needed to ascertain what the animal kinds were and whether there would be a single pair of them on the Ark (unclean and non-flying animals) or if there would be seven pairs (clean animals and flying creatures). We cannot be sure that Noah’s system of clean and unclean creatures matched the specifications described as part of the Mosaic Covenant in Leviticus 11, but since we had nothing else to go on, this is the system we used both at the Ark and for this story.

The animals that the Israelites were permitted to eat included those that had cloven hooves and chewed the cud. Popular animals like cows and sheep fit this description, but it also includes an animal that most of us would never consider as belonging in that category: the giraffe. If the giraffes are clean animals, then there would have been seven pairs of this kind on the Ark instead of just two, as is commonly depicted (see the question below about how Noah fit the animals on the Ark for the answer to why the Ark Encounter used seven pairs instead of just seven for the clean and flying creatures). Interestingly enough, in 2008, Jewish rabbis and vets determined that giraffes are considered clean animals and can be eaten as kosher, although they did not anticipate anyone doing it since they are endangered.

How did Noah find all the animals?

If you have already read the story, you know that Noah did not travel the world to find and catch all the animals. However, this is the impression many people have about the Ark’s animals, and skeptics frequently pose this question. The simple answer is that Noah did not need to find the creatures. God told him that the animals would come to him (Genesis 6:20).

This fact also relates to the previous question. Noah did not really need to know the difference between all the clean and unclean animals, at least initially, because God sent the correct number of creatures to him. However, he probably did possess such knowledge, given that he offered a sacrifice of each kind of clean animal and flying creature after the Flood.

How did Noah’s family know how to care for so many different animals?

Feeding and caring for over 1,000 kinds of animals would not be an easy task when one considers all their different needs. In his thorough study on the Ark, John Woodmorappe proposed the possibility of Noah having a menagerie prior to the Flood so that he could learn all about the animals. This would require God to bring the animals several months or years earlier so that Noah and his family could observe them and then grow or purchase the proper supplies and food for each creature.

While such a scenario is plausible, it seems unlikely. Noah surely had enough work to do in building the Ark and procuring enough food. If thousands of animals arrived months in advance, it would drastically increase the workload for Noah and his family and would require them to have even more food on hand to care for so many animals for an even longer period of time.

In our story, we answered this question in a different way. Rather than assuming that Noah needed to be the expert in every area, we made Emzara the animal expert by giving her a love for animals from an early age. Throughout the series she learns about various creatures and keeps records of them. Just as we had God prepare Noah to build the Ark, we had Him prepare Noah’s wife with the knowledge and ability to care for thousands of animals. We hinted at the menagerie idea when we described about two dozen animals arriving several weeks earlier than the rest. These were the ones that Emzara had never studied before, so this gave her time to complete that task before the Flood began.

How did Noah fit all the animals on the Ark?

To answer this question, we need to know two major details: the size of the Ark and the number/size of the animals. The first issue is easier to deal with since the Bible gives us the Ark’s dimensions. However, it uses cubits as the unit of measurement, so unless we know the length of the cubit Noah used, we cannot be completely certain of the Ark’s size. A cubit is the distance between one’s elbow and longest finger. Since many ancient structures were based on a royal cubit (a cubit plus a handbreadth), it is possible that the Ark was as well. The Ark Encounter used a royal cubit of 20.4 inches (one of the shortest of the royal cubits from ancient cultures). If this was the proper length of the cubit Noah used, then the Ark would have been 510 feet long by 85 feet wide by 51 feet tall.

Determining the number of animals to put in the Ark is more difficult since we do not have enough knowledge of every kind of land-dependent animal that has ever lived. We cannot always be sure which animals are members of the same kind. For example, we know that lions, tigers, leopards, bobcats, and the common house cat all belong to the same kind. So, Noah did not need to bring two of each of these types of cats on the Ark, he just needed two members of the cat kind that would become the ancestors of all the cats in the world today. But there are scores of animals for which we do not have information about whether they can interbreed (which means they would be the same kind). So researchers conducted an extensive study to reach a conservative estimate of the number of kinds that would be on the Ark. Whenever they lacked data about whether certain animals belonged to the same kind, the animals would be separated into different kinds, even if it seemed likely that they were the same. As a result of this study, it was determined that nearly 1,400 land-dependent animal kinds needed to be represented on the Ark, and it is very possible that this number is much too high.

Next, we needed to determine how many of each kind were needed. We know there were two of every unclean, non-flying, land-dependent animal. Obviously, Noah did not need to worry about bringing fish, whales, lobsters, etc. Some Bibles mention that Noah brought seven of each clean animal and flying creature, while other Bibles state that he brought seven pairs. The Hebrew text states that he was to bring “seven seven, a male and his female.” It seems that a stronger case can be made for the “seven pairs” position. However, even if one favors the other view, the Ark Encounter always went with the higher number whenever there was uncertainty. So it included seven pairs of all flying creatures and all clean animals.

Using this approach, the total number of animals would have been fewer than 6,800 with 85 percent of them being smaller than 10 kilograms (22 pounds). Taking into account all of the food and water requirements for the animals and eight people, the Ark Encounter team demonstrated that all of the animals and supplies would fit nicely in the Ark. Skeptics often think the Ark was too small, but what is often left unspoken is that they typically include every species of land animal (not every kind, which is often more like the family level in our modern taxonomy), along with marine creatures, insects, bacteria, and plants in their estimates. Some Christians think the Ark was way bigger than it needed to be, presumably so that other people could go on board if they decided to. However, the Ark researchers discovered this was not the case. Everything fit rather well, without much space left over. If you think about it, this makes perfect sense. God knew how big the Ark needed to be. Why would He tell Noah to waste time making something that was too small or much bigger than it needed to be?

The Ark Encounter goes into these points in much more detail, and the team has also produced a number of resources that explain this issue, such as How Many Animals Were on the Ark? and Inside Noah’s Ark: Why it Worked, both available at www.answersingenesis.org.

Didn’t Noah’s family board the Ark and wait for seven days before the Flood started?

This idea is somewhat common among Christians, but it is based on a misunderstanding of Genesis 7. In verses 1–4, God told Noah to enter the Ark along with his family and the animals because in seven days the Flood would begin. Since verse 5 states that Noah did everything God commanded, those who hold this view assume that they boarded the Ark on the day God spoke to Noah and then waited seven more days for the Flood to start.

The problem with the above scenario is that it forces a contradiction into the text because it does not take into account the rest of the passage. In verses 7–9 we read about Noah and the animals going into the Ark, and in verses 10–12 we read about that seven-day period and then the start of the Flood. Up until this point, it might seem reasonable to interpret the passage as described in the question; however, verse 13 rules out such a view. Referring back to the day that the Flood started when the fountains of the great deep broke open (v. 11), verse 13 states, “On the very same day Noah and his sons, Shem and Ham and Japheth, and Noah’s wife and the three wives of his sons with them entered the ark.”

So Noah and his family entered the Ark on the very same day that the Flood started? How is this possible since previous verses in Genesis 7 seem to indicate that they entered the Ark seven days earlier? The solution is that it took Noah and his family seven days to board the animals and whatever other supplies they may have needed to load. Yes, they did enter on the day God commanded, but they also entered seven days later. Verse 7 states that they entered “to escape the waters of the flood.” The phrase in Hebrew seems to indicate that Noah could see the waters as he entered the Ark, so this would not have occurred on the day God told him to enter. It is only after they spent seven days loading the Ark that God shut the door (v. 16).

Why did you have God tell Noah to “enter” the Ark instead of to “come into” the Ark?

In Genesis 7:1, the New King James Version states that God told Noah to “come into the ark,” and some other Bibles have similar wording. Based on this reading, some people have claimed that God was in the Ark with Noah and his family during the Flood. After all, how could He tell Noah to “come into” a place if He were not in it?

The ESV does the opposite. It has God telling Noah to “go into” the Ark. Does this mean that God was outside of the Ark when this command was spoken?

The solution to this problem is rather quite simple, but it occasionally upsets people who have grown attached to the idea that God’s presence was in the Ark with Noah and his family. The Hebrew word translated as “come” or “go” actually gives no indication about the location of the speaker. Perhaps the best way to translate the word in Genesis 7:1 is to have God tell them to “enter” the Ark, as is found in the NASB and HCSB. This rendering does not tell us whether God was inside or outside the Ark at the time.

In one sense, since God is omnipresent, He was in the Ark with Noah. But the idea that God’s special presence was in the Ark is not supported by the Hebrew language of Genesis 7:1, and such an idea is very difficult to support in light of Genesis 8:1. In that verse, some 150 days after the Flood started, we are told that “God remembered Noah” and all the animals. This does not mean that God had forgotten about Noah, but it means that He turned His attention back to Noah with an eye of fulfilling His promise to preserve him and his family through the Flood.

Where did you come up with the names of the women on the Ark?

The Bible does not mention the name of Noah’s wife or of his daughters-in-law. At the Ark Encounter, we decided to name them to enhance the guest experience at the themed attraction. They were real people who had real names. We just do not know what they were. By giving them names we were able to make them seem more like real people. We included multiple signs throughout the Ark to inform visitors that we used artistic license in naming the women.

As content manager for the Ark Encounter, I (Tim) had the opportunity to decide what names we would use, although I asked our team members to submit their choices for a couple of the names (Rayneh and Ar’yel). Kezia was taken from Job 42:14. After his trials, Job named one of his daughters Keziah. We dropped the last letter and assigned this name to Ham’s wife. As mentioned in the non-fiction section of Noah: Man of Resolve, Emzara’s name comes from the Book of Jubilees, an extra-biblical, Jewish writing popular during New Testament times.