The unit of measure in the Bible was the cubit. We know that a cubit is the distance from a man's elbow to his fingertips. If men in those times were the size of humans today, the cubit would have been about 18 inches. But since we don't know of the size of people in ancient times we can't know the cubit's precise length. (It's possible people were bigger than today since they lived closer to the perfect humans God created in the Garden of Eden.)
If we employ the eighteen inch cubit, the ark was
- 450 feet long (approximately one and one half football fields in length),
- 75 feet broad, and
- 45 feet high (approximately the height of a five story building)
- According to the Ryrie Study Bible, the ark's carrying capacity equaled that of 522 standard railroad stock cars. Only 188 cars would be required to hold 45,000 sheep-sized animals, leaving three trains of 104 cars each for food. Today it is estimated that there are 17,600 species of animals, making 45,000 a likely approximation of the number Noah might have taken into the ark. (I read other estimates of the number of animals on the ark that was much higher. I used the lowest number of animals for the book to make the story easier for readers to comprehend.)
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