Make you an ark of gopher wood; rooms shall you make in the ark, and shall pitch it inside and outside with pitch.
All Commentaries on Genesis 6:14 Go To Genesis 6
Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
Undoubtedly the ark is a symbol of the city of God on its pilgrimage in history. It is a figure of the church that was saved by the wood on which there hung the “Mediator between God and men, himself man, Jesus Christ.” Even the very measurements of length, height and breadth of the ark are meant to point to the reality of the human body into which he came as it was foretold that he would come. It will be recalled that the length of a normal body from head to foot is six times the breadth from one side to the other and ten times the thickness from back to front. Measure a man who is lying on the ground, either prone or supine. He is six times as long from head to foot as he is wide from left to right or right to left, and he is ten times as long as he is high from the ground up. That is why the ark was made three hundred cubits in length, fifty in breadth and thirty in height. As for the door in the side, that surely, symbolizes the open wound made by the lance in the side of the Crucified—the door by which those who come to him enter in, in the sense that believers enter the church by means of the sacraments that issued from that wound. It was ordered that the ark be made out of squared timbers—a symbol of the foursquare stability of a holy life, which, like a cube, stands firm however it is turned. So it is with every other detail of the ark’s construction. They are all symbols of something in the church.
