On the Form of the Ark of Noah. Sll 



manner it docs so ; and as the word, in its singular form at least, 

 does not again occur in tlie Hebrew text, to enable us to deter- 

 mine its true meaning by its connection with other words, it 

 must be acknowledged there is some difficulty in investigating 

 that meaning. 



The word, in what appears to be its plural form, occurs in- 

 deed in several passages; as in Genesis xliii. 16, 1st Kings 

 xviii. 26, and others, where its connection determines the sense 

 to be, as it is rendered in these passages in the English Bible, 

 nocm or noonday ; and as other two words have been formed 

 from the root " tzohar"' by the assumption of servile letters to it, 

 the one signifying oil, as in Deuteronomy vii. 1 3, and the other/ 

 to make oil, as in Job xxiv. 11, the lexicographers have tbere^ 

 fore assumed, that the radical idea expressed by the word is, 

 to send out or admit clear light. 



It was, no doubt, with an impression of the accuracy of this 

 assumption, that " tzohar'*' was translated window. 



The employment of the plural form of the word, however, 

 in the sense noon or noonday^ leads naturally to the inference 

 that this use of it is only figurative ; and so the literal meaning 

 of the singular noun may have been something different. 



There is a condition of the text which goes to prove that 

 window is not the proper meaning in the passage under con- 

 sideration. Neither a window nor a door could, with propriety, 

 be referred to as any thing added to a building. With regard 

 to the door mentioned in the text, this circumstance is correctly 

 attended to in the expressions referring to it, — " the door shalt 

 thou set in the side,"" — where in is the correct sense of the 

 Hebrew. Had the word " tzohar^ expressed a window or simi- 

 lar opening, no doubt a like form of expression would have been 

 used regarding it ; but we find a different one, — " a window 

 shalt thou make to the ark," — where to is the correct sense of 

 the Hebrew. 



In fact, the Hebrew tongue has another word for window 

 (chalun), occurring in this very history of the flood (Genesis 

 viii. 6), and of which the literal meaning is accurately fixed in 

 other passages, by its connexion, as in Genesis xxvi. 8, Judges 

 V. 28, and others *. 



* There is another word translated unndwo in thia history of the flood 



