The Hebrew words referring to Noah’s “Ark” and the “Ark” of the Covenant are completely different. Why, then, do we call them both “arks” in English?
the word comes from Latin “arca” which means “chest”. The arc of the covenant was a chest so that explains one meaning. I figure the meaning was extended to a boxy-shaped vessel intended to keep all the animals.
According Webster’s and the Eastern Bible dictionary sailor is correct the ark was named after it’s shape. Moses’ bulrush raft is called an ark too:
http://www.hyperdictionary.com/dictionary/ark
also the place where the Torah scrolls are kept in a synagogue is an ark.
The Hebrew word for “ark” as in “Noah’s ark” and “Moses’ ark” is untranslatable, it’s meaning being lost to history. Contextually, it best appears to be translated as “life raft” or “life boat.” In Hebrew, the word as in “Ark of the Covenant” is simply the Hebrew word for “chest.”
Here is an earlier thread on the subject:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=7717
Dex never got back, so we can assume it’s an etymological dead end (that is, the Hebrew word tebah–the arks of Moses and Noah), although this page contains an intriguing idea on the subject.
It’s not necessarily a dead end, I just forgot, and it’s been a few years ago.
I’ll put it on the list of things to try to look up, why the KJV chose the word “ark” for both Noah’s boat and the Ark of the Covenant, but not for Moses’s basket… when the Hebrew uses the same word for Noah’s boat and Moses’s basket, and a different word for the Ark of the Covenant. If that makes sense.
OTOH, if someone else has the time and energy and wants to look it up, I’d be very glad not to.
Aaahh, it’s nice to reread one of my old posts again. (I’m in the one Earl Snake-Hips Tucker cited, though my screenname there was “Keeves”. Had to get a new screenname when I switched email addresses and couldn’t remember my old password.)
Anyway, I ;j checked my Hebrew concordance this time. It lists “tayvah” exactly 27 times: 25 times in Genesis 6-9, all referring to Noah’s Ark, and twice in Exodus 2, both referring to Moses’ Ark.
“Aron” has a lot more listings, close to 200 scattered all over the place. I didn’t check out each and every one, but in the vast majority cases, if the phrase wasn’t “Ark of the Covenant”, then it was either “the Ark of God” or “the Ark of the Lord God” or “the Ark of Israel” or “the Levites [insert verb here]-ed the Ark”, or something similar, all of which can be presumed to refer to the same thing, I suppose.
But two exceptions did jump out at me:
Genesis 50:26 (the very last verse of the book) uses it in the sense of a coffin: “And Joseph died at the age of 110 years, and they embalmed him and he was placed in an Aron in Egypt.”
This word also appears three times at the opposite end of the Jewish Bible, in 2 Chronicles 24:8,10,11. The story there concerns a tax which was imposed for upkeep of the Temple, and people would place that money into a certain box, and the text there uses the word “aron” to refer to that box. (Lest one suspect that the word “aron” was used because the Ark Of The Covenant was used for this tax-collection, the story there makes it clear the this box was a new one, made specifically for this purpose.)
Anyway, I think that it is not at all unusual for one language to have two synonyms which both get translated as the same word in a second language. I suspect that this is what’s happening here. Perhaps an “aron” is a generic box, while “tayvah” is specifically one which floats.