Genesis 1: to 10:

Genesis 11: to 50:

THE RACE

THE NATION

Adam to Noah

Abraham to Joseph

When Peter wrote about the world that then was being overflowed with water

(II Pet. 3: 6) he may not have referred to Gen. 1: 2, but to the flood in the days of Noah,

but seeing that he wrote for Hebrew readers that would be quite in harmony with the

Scriptural rule, the flood in the days of Noah being the background of the call of

Abraham, even as the deep of Gen. 1: 2 is the background of the creation of Adam. We

can well believe that some readers will look somewhat askance at the way in which we

have put the "ark" of Noah and the "coffin" of Joseph in correspondence.

In the N.T. the same Greek word is used of the Ark of Noah, and the Ark of the

Tabernacle, namely kibotos, which shows that they are to be considered as similar. This

word is employed for both arks in the Septuagint version. The words employed by

Moses, however, differ. He uses the word tebah for the Ark of Noah, and the word aron

for the Ark of the tabernacle. Parkhurst says that the word tebah is derived from the

same root that gives us tohu meaning "hollow", the word which is translated "without

form" in Gen. 1: 2, and that reference of itself is suggestive in linking the "deep" of the

overthrow with the means of deliverance from the deluge in the days of Noah. Whether

we are likely to discover the true root meaning of tebah is questionable, but the Scriptural

use of tebah has a lovely human touch about it. Apart from the references in Gen. 6:-9:

this word occurs in one other passage namely in Exod. 2: 3, 5, where it is used of the ark

made by the mother of Moses in which she placed her infant son:

The ark made by the mother of Moses was treated with "bitumen" or "pitch" but the

ark made by Noah was treated with a "covering", the word "pitch" not being the same as

that used in Exod. 2: 3.  One cannot help feeling that when Moses came to write the

record of the Flood he could not help remembering the little ark in which he had been

entrusted to the Nile, and the choice of the same word in Gen. 6:-9: may indicate a

loving remembrance of that Hebrew mother in Egypt.

How does all this justify the correspondence with Joseph's "coffin"? Well, the

self same word aron that is found in Exod. 25: and translated "ark" is the word

translated "coffin" here, and had Moses not been influenced by his childhood

remembrances, the N.T. and the LXX make it plain that he might well have used the

word aron (translated "coffin") in Gen. 6:-9: also.