ARK, NOAH'S

Known also as the Ark of Safety. Constructed by Shem, Ham, and Japheth, under the superintendence of Noah, and in it, as a chosen tabernacle of refuge, the patriarch's family took refuge. This ark has been called by many commentators a tabernacle of Jehovah ; and Doctor Jarvis, speaking of the Hebrew word , pronounced Zo-har, which has been translated window, says that, in all other passages of Scripture where this word occurs, it signifies the meridian light, the brightest effulgence of day, and therefore it could not have been an aperture, but a source of light itself. He supposes it therefore to have been the Divine Shekinah, or Glory of Jehovah which afterward dwelt between the cherubim over the Ark of the Covenant in the tabernacle and the Temple (see the Church of the Redeemed, 1, 20).