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Easton's Bible Dictionary
rest, (Hebrew Noah)
(1) The grandson of Methuselah ( Genesis
5:25 - 29
), who was for two hundred and fifty years contemporary with Adam, and the son
of Lamech, who was about fifty years old at the time of Adam's death. This patriarch
is rightly regarded as the connecting link between the old and the new world.
He is the second great progenitor of the human family.
The words of his father Lamech at his birth ( Genesis
5:29 ) have been regarded as in a sense prophetical, designating Noah as a
type of Him who is the true "rest and comfort" of men under the burden of life
( Matthew
11:28 ).
He lived five hundred years, and then there were born unto him three sons, Shem,
Ham, and Japheth ( Genesis
5:32 ). He was a "just man and perfect in his generation," and "walked with
God" (Compare Ezekiel
14:14 , 14:20
). But now the descendants of Cain and of Seth began to intermarry, and then there
sprang up a race distinguished for their ungodliness. Men became more and more
corrupt, and God determined to sweep the earth of its wicked population ( Genesis
6:7 ). But with Noah God entered into a covenant, with a promise of deliverance
from the threatened deluge (Genesis
6:18). He was accordingly commanded to build an ark ( Genesis
6:14 - 16
) for the saving of himself and his house. An interval of one hundred and twenty
years elapsed while the ark was being built ( Genesis
6:3 ), during which Noah bore constant testimony against the unbelief and
wickedness of that generation ( 1
Peter 3:18 - 20
; 2
Peter 2:5 ).
When the ark of "gopher-wood" (mentioned only here) was at length completed according
to the command of the Lord, the living creatures that were to be preserved entered
into it; and then Noah and his wife and sons and daughters-in-law entered it,
and the "Lord shut him in" (Genesis
7:16). The judgment-threatened now fell on the guilty world, "the world that
then was, being overflowed with water, perished" ( 2
Peter 3:6 ). The ark floated on the waters for one hundred and fifty days,
and then rested on the mountains of Ararat ( Genesis
8:3 , 8:4
); but not for a considerable time after this was divine permission given him
to leave the ark, so that he and his family were a whole year shut up within it
( Genesis
8:4 - 14).
On leaving the ark Noah's first act was to erect an altar, the first of which
there is any mention, and offer the sacrifices of adoring thanks and praise to
God, who entered into a covenant with him, the first covenant between God and
man, granting him possession of the earth by a new and special charter, which
remains in force to the present time ( Genesis
8:21 - 9:17).
). As a sign and witness of this covenant, the rainbow was adopted and set apart
by God, as a sure pledge that never again would the earth be destroyed by a flood.
But, alas! Noah after this fell into grievous sin ( Genesis
9:21 ); and the conduct of Ham on this sad occasion led to the memorable prediction
regarding his three sons and their descendants. Noah "lived after the flood three
hundred and fifty years, and he died" ( Genesis
9:29 ). (See DELUGE).
(2) Noah, motion, (Hebrew No'ah) one of the five daughters of Zelophehad ( Numbers
26:33 ; 27:1
; 36:11
; Joshua
17:3 ).
Hitchcock's Dictionary of Bible Names
(1) Repose; consolation
(2) that quavers or totters (Zelophehad's daughter)
Smith's Bible Dictionary
(rest), The tenth in descent from Adam, in the line of
Seth was the son of Lamech and grandson of Methuselah. (B.C. 2948-1998.) We hear
nothing of Noah till he is 500 years old when It is said he begat three sons,
Shem, Ham and Japheth. In consequence of the grievous and hopeless wickedness
of the world at this time, God resolved to destroy it. Of Noahs life during this
age of almost universal apostasy we are told but little. It is merely said that
he was a righteous man and perfect in his generations (i.e. among his contemporaries),
and that he, like Enoch, walked with God. St. Peter calls him "a preacher of righteousness."
( 2
Peter 2:5 ) Besides this we are merely told that he had three: sons each of
whom had married a wife; that he built the ark in accordance with divine direction;
end that he was 600 years old when the flood came. ( Genesis
6:7 )
The ark. --
The precise meaning of the Hebrew word (tebah) is uncertain. The word occurs only
in Genesis and in ( Exodus
2:3 ) In all probability it is to the old Egyptian that we are to look for
its original form. Bunsen, in his vocabulary gives tba , "a chest," tpt , "a boat,"
and in the Coptic version of ( Exodus
2:3 , 2:5
) thebi is the rendering of tebah . This "chest" or "boat" was to be made of gopher
(i.e. cypress) wood, a kind of timber which both for its lightness and its durability
was employed by the Phoenicians for building their vessels. The planks of the
ark, after being put together were to be protected by a coating of pitch, or rather
bitumen, both inside and outside, to make it water-tight, and perhaps also as
a protection against the attacks of marine animals. The ark was to consist of
a number of "nests" or small compartments, with a view, no doubt, to the convenient
distribution of the different animals and their food. These were to be arranged
in three tiers, one above another; "with lower, second and third (stories) shalt
thou make it." Means were also to be provided for letting light into the ark.
There was to be a door this was to be placed in the side of the ark. Of the shape
of the ark nothing is said, but its dimensions are given. It was to be 300 cubits
in length, 50 in breadth and 30 in height. Taking 21 inches for the cubit, the
ark would be 525 feet in length, 87 feet 6 inches in breadth and 52 feet 6 inches
in height. This is very considerably larger than the largest British man-of-war,
but not as large as some modern ships. It should be remembered that this huge
structure was only intended to float on the water, and was not in the proper sense
of the word a ship. It had neither mast, sail nor rudder it was in fact nothing
but an enormous floating house, or rather oblong box. The inmates of the ark were
Noah and his wife and his three sons with their wives. Noah was directed to take
also animals of all kinds into the ark with him, that they might be preserved
alive. (The method of speaking of the animals that were taken into the ark "clean"
and "unclean," implies that only those which were useful to man were preserved,
and that no wild animals were taken into the ark; so that there is no difficulty
from the great number of different species of animal life existing in the word.
--ED.)
The flood. --
The ark was finished, and all its living freight was gathered into it as a place
of safety. Jehovah shut him in, says the chronicler, speaking of Noah; and then
there ensued a solemn pause of seven days before the threatened destruction was
let loose. At last the before the threatened destruction was flood came; the waters
were upon the earth. A very simple but very powerful and impressive description
is given of the appalling catastrophe. The waters of the flood increased for a
period of 190 days (40+150, comparing) ( Genesis
7:12 ) and Genesis
7:24 and then "God remembered Noah" and made a wind to pass over the earth,
so that the waters were assuaged. The ark rested on the seventeenth day of the
seventh month on the mountains of Ararat. After this the waters gradually decreased
till the first day of the tenth month, when the tops of the mountains were seen
but Noah and his family did not disembark till they had been in the ark a year
and a month and twenty days. Whether the flood was universal or partial has given
rise to much controversy; but there can be no doubt that it was universal, so
far as man was concerned: we mean that it extended to all the then known world
. The literal truth of the narrative obliges us to believe that the whole human
race , except eight persons, perished by the flood. The language of the book of
Genesis does not compel us to suppose that the whole surface of the globe was
actually covered with water, if the evidence of geology requires us to adopt the
hypothesis of a partial deluge. It is natural to suppose it that the writer, when
he speaks of "all flesh," "all in whose nostrils was the breath of life" refers
only to his own locality. This sort of language is common enough in the Bible
when only a small part of the globe is intended. Thus, for instance, it is said
that "all countries came into Egypt to Joseph to buy corn and that" a decree went
out from Caesar Augustus that all the worldshould be taxed." The truth of the
biblical narrative is confirmed by the numerous traditions of other nations, which
have preserved the memory of a great and destructive flood, from which but a small
part of mankind escaped. They seem to point back to a common centre whence they
were carried by the different families of man as they wandered east and west.
The traditions which come nearest to the biblical account are those of the nations
of western Asia. Foremost among these is the Chaldean. Other notices of a flood
may be found in the Phoenician mythology. There is a medal of Apamea in Phrygia,
struck as late as the time of Septimius Severus, in which the Phrygian deluge
is commemorated. This medal represents a kind of a square vessel floating in the
water. Through an opening in it are seen two persons, a man and a woman. Upon
the top of this chest or ark is perched a bird, whilst another flies toward it
carrying a branch between its feet. Before the vessel are represented the same
pair as having just, quitted it and got upon the dry land. Singularly enough,
too, on some specimens of this medal the letters NO or NOE have been found on
the vessel, as in the cut on p. 454. (Tayler Lewis deduces the partial extent
of the flood from the very face of the Hebrew text." "Earth," where if speaks
of "all the earth," often is, and here should be, translated "land," the home
of the race, from which there appears to have been little inclination to wander.
Even after the flood God had to compel them to disperse. "Under the whole heavens"
simply includes the horizon reaching around "all the land" the visible horizon.
We still use the words in the same sense and so does the Bible. Nearly all commentators
now agree on the partial extent of the deluge. If is probable also that the crimes
and violence of the previous age had greatly diminished the population, and that
they would have utterly exterminated the race had not God in this way saved out
some good seed from their destruction. So that the flood, by appearing to destroy
the race, really saved the world from destruction .--ED.) (The scene of the deluge
--Hugh Miller, in his "Testimony of the Rocks," argues that there is a remarkable
portion of the globe, chiefly on the Asiatic continent, though it extends into
Europe, and which is nearly equal to all Europe in extent, whose rivers (some
of them the Volga, Oural, Sihon, Kour and the Amoo, of great size) do not fall
into the ocean, but, on the contrary are all turned inward, losing themselves
in the eastern part of the tract, in the lakes of a rainless district in the western
parts into such seas as the Caspian and the Aral. In this region there are extensive
districts still under the level of the ocean. Vast plains white with salt and
charged with sea-shells, show that the Caspian Sea was at no distant period greatly
more extensive than it is now. With the well-known facts, then, before us regarding
this depressed Asiatic region, let us suppose that the human family, still amounting
to several millions, though greatly reduced by exterminating wars and exhausting
vices, were congregated in that tract of country which, extending eastward from
the modern Ararat to far beyond the Sea of Aral, includes the original Caucasian
centre of the race. Let us suppose that, the hour of judgment having arrived,
the land began gradually to sink (as the tract in the Run of Cutch sank in the
year 1819) equably for forty days at the rate of about 400 feet per day a rate
not twice greater than that at which the tide rises in the Straits of Magellan,
and which would have rendered itself apparent as but a persistent inward flowing
of the sea. The depression, which, by extending to the Euxine Sea and the Persian
Gulf on the one hand and the Gulf of Finland on the other, would open up by three
separate channels the "fountains of the great deep," and which included an area
of 2000 miles each way, would, at the end of the fortieth day, be sunk in its
centre to the depth of 16,000 feet, --sufficient to bury the loftiest mountains
of the district; and yet, having a gradient of declination of but sixteen feet
per mile, the contour of its hills and plains would remain apparently what they
had been before, and the doomed inhabitants would, but the water rising along
the mountain sides, and one refuge after another swept away. -ED.)
After the Flood. --
Noahs great act after he left the ark was to build an altar and to offer sacrifices.
This is the first altar of which we read in Scripture, and the first burnt sacrifice.
Then follows the blessing of God upon Noah and his sons. Noah is clearly the head
of a new human family, the representative of the whole race. It is as such that
God makes his covenant with him; and hence selects a natural phenomenon as the
sign of that covenant. The bow in the cloud, seen by every nation under heaven,
is an unfailing witness to the truth of God. Noah now for the rest of his life
betook himself to agricultural pursuits. It is particularly noticed that he planted
a vineyard. Whether in ignorance of its properties or otherwise we are not informed,
but he drank of the juice of the grape till he became intoxicated and shamefully
exposed himself in his own tent. One of sons, Ham, mocked openly at his fathers
disgrace. The others, with dutiful care and reverence, endeavored to hide it.
When he recovered from the effects of his intoxication, he declared that a curse
should rest upon the sons of Ham. With the curse on his youngest son was joined
a blessing on the other two. After this prophetic blessing we hear no more of
the patriarch but the sum of his years, 950.
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
no'-a (noach, "rest"; Septuagint Noe; Josephus, Nochos):
(1) The 10th in descent from Adam in the line of Seth (Genesis
5:28 , 29).
Lamech here seems to derive the word from the nacham, "to comfort," but this is
probably a mere play upon the name by Noah's father. The times in which Noah was
born were degenerate, and this finds pathetic expression in Lamech's saying at
the birth of Noah, "This same shall comfort us in our work and in the toil of
our hands, which cometh because of the ground which Yahweh hath cursed." Concerning
theory that Noah is the name of a dynasty, like Pharaoh or Caesar, rather than
of a single individual, see ANTEDILUVIANS. In his 600th year the degenerate races
of mankind were cut off by the Deluge. But 120 years previously (Genesis
6:3) he had been warned of the catastrophe, and according to 1
Peter 3:20 had been preparing for the event by building the ark (see ARK;
DELUGE OF NOAH). In the cuneiform inscriptions Noah corresponds to "Hasisadra" (Xisuthrus). After the flood Noah celebrated his deliverance by building an altar
and offering sacrifices to Yahweh (Genesis
8:20), and was sent forth with God's blessing to be "fruitful, and multiply,
and replenish the earth" (Genesis
9:1), as Adam had been sent forth at the beginning (Genesis
1:28). In token of the certainty of God's covenant not to destroy the race
again by flood, a rainbow spanned the sky whose reappearance was ever after to
be a token of peace. But Noah was not above temptation. In the prosperity which
followed, he became drunken from the fruit of the vineyard he had planted. His
son Ham irreverently exposed the nakedness of his father, while Shem and Japheth
covered it from view (Genesis
9:22 , 23).
The curse upon Canaan the son of Ham was literally fulfilled in subsequent history
when Israel took possession of Palestine, when Tyre fell before the arms of Alexander,
and Carthage surrendered to Rome.
George Frederick Wright
(2) One of the daughters of Zelophehad (Numbers
26:33 ; 27:1
; 36:11
; Joshua
17:3).
Tags:
10th descendant of adam, altar, animals, ark, bible commentary, bible history, bible reference, bible study, covenant, deluge, drunken, flood, ham curse, noach, noah, noah's ark, noe, rainbow, tebah
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