Size of the Rooms on Noah’s Ark Model

God said to Noah, “Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark” (Genesis 6:14). The Hebrew word translated “rooms” is qên and it literally means “nests.” That indicates that these would not be large pens where the animals could move around a lot. Noah, his family, and all the menagerie endured 371 days onboard the Ark.

That being the case, it is my opinion that God caused the animals to hibernate during most of that time, so large spaces were not required for the animals. Furthermore, since the average size the animals was about the size of a small cow, a good majority of the animals were small.

In order to represent this, I made small animal cages for the second deck. I tried to represent a variety of “kinds” of animals: clean and unclean, mammals, reptiles (dinosaurs) and birds.

We know that only a total of eight people were saved (Genesis 7:7); however, there was sufficient room in the Ark to save many, many more had they only heeded the warnings of Noah.

Based on two-thirds of the total available square footage (96,750 sq. ft.) of the Ark, or 64,500 sq. ft., and taking 25% of the remaining space for stores, leaves 48,375 sq. ft. for passengers. Allowing 80 sq. ft. per a family of four, or 20 sq. ft. per person (the average size of an 8’ x 10’ two-man prison cell), and dividing 48,375 by 80 yields about 605 living spaces. At four people per space, that comes to 2420 total passengers. More could have been accommodated if needed.

The point being that the Ark had room to save many more people than just Noah and his family. In like manner, Jesus’ atonement for sin on the cross, and His victory over the grave is sufficient to save all of mankind, but it is only effective for those who put their faith and trust in Him.