When Noah’s ark settles on Mount Ararat, there is an awesome picture we should have in our minds. The picture is available only in the Hebrew. So quickly, let’s review three Hebrew words and then one Hebrew letter. Then we will bring it all together.
When cursing the serpent, God makes this prophecy: “[The seed of the woman] will bruise your head...” (Genesis 3:15). The word for “bruise” in this passage is the Hebrew word shuwph, which can mean bruise, crush, or to fall upon.
Holding onto this thought, let’s reach for another Hebrew word, the word “curse.” In Hebrew, the word “curse” is the word arar, spelled ארר. This word is used by God when He curses the serpent, saying, “Cursed are you...”
Onto the next word, beginning with this question: Isn’t it fascinating that the Torah reports exactly what mountain the ark landed on? A general area would have sufficed, but the Torah instead tells us specifically where the ark came to rest. And that is significant in more ways than one. It tells us the ark landed on Mount Ararat. In Hebrew, the word Ararat is spelled אררט.
Notice, the first three letters of Ararat (ארר) are the same three letters that spell arar, “curse” (ארר). By simply adding the letter tet (ט) at the end of the word, we come to spell Ararat, as in Mount Ararat. What are we to make of this?
To answer that question, we must know that each Hebrew letter symbolizes something. For instance, the letter aleph represents an ox. The letter beit represents a house. The letter dalet represents a door. We could go through the whole Hebrew alphabet this way, because again, every letter is a picture. So what, then, does the letter tet represent? The letter tet represents a snake! (Reference) You can see the letter even resembles a snake with its curled tail on the right and its head lifted up on the left:
Now that we have run through three Hebrew words and the letter tet, we are ready to look at the picture. But first, let’s frame it...
The enemy had to have been proud of himself, because humanity––God’s crown of creation––had become corrupt beyond recognition. The corruption of all fresh had gone so far that God saw fit to wipe the whole earth clean with a global flood. But before He pulled the trigger, God also did a subtle something that the enemy wasn’t expecting. He instructed a man named Noah to start building an ark. Noah, a man righteous in his generation, obediently responded to God, and his construction of the ark began. So while the enemy busied himself with the kingdoms of the world (thinking that’s where he would have the most impact in his destruction), somewhere outside of town, maybe off the enemy’s radar, there was a man hammering down one nail at a time. And even if the enemy was aware of the project, I imagine he was so drunk on his own success and so possessed by his own ambition that he underestimated the importance of one layman’s contribution to the world. If the enemy had cared enough about it, I imagine he would have called the kings of the earth to ride up on the construction site and burn the boat to the ground. But as it happened, the ark was completed, the project was finished, and God’s plan was set into motion.
Into this ark, God gathered all the living creatures of the Garden of Eden, Noah and his family included. This ark became a kind of reincarnated Garden of Eden, in that it brought together all the life that once dwelled in the Garden. As I see it, the ark was like a capsule of Eden, the Garden in pill form so to speak. God the doctor prescribed just one dosage; God the pharmacist ensured the right cut of ingredients; God the insurer made sure it was covered by premium grace. And so the ark––this Garden of Eden––lifted from the ground and floated atop the floodwaters. No matter how deep the floodwaters rose, the ark would abound all the more (Romans 5:20). Meanwhile, the enemy looked on with helplessness. The dominion for which he had labored for so long was gone now, destroyed by this baptism of floodwater. Without the kings of the earth, without the nephilim he had produced, he had neither hands nor feet with which to carry out his desires. Suddenly he found himself to be a snake again––a lowly lonesome creature without any legs or arms with which elevate himself. For the first time in a long time, the snake thought back to God’s declaration that the woman’s seed would shuwph its head.
And sure enough, what happened next? The ark landed on Mount Ararat. Get the picture?
God’s salvation fell upon the head of the cursed serpent. The weight of the ark drove itself deep into wet mud of Ararat, bruising heavily its cold and slimy surface.
“That’s one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind.”
