Let us do it together:
"14 Make yourself an ark of gofer-wood; you are to make the ark with rooms and cover it with pitch both outside and inside. 15 Here is how you are to build it: the length of the ark is to be 450 feet, its width seventy-five feet and its height forty-five feet. 16 You are to make an opening for daylight in the ark eighteen inches below its roof. Put a door in its side; and build it with lower, second and third decks."
Genesis 6: 14-16
Good start, but let’s go back to the drawing board. Humans and animals live in the 3rd, not the 2nd dimension. So following your logic we would have a cube if we followed the exact dimensions. Clearly, the directions contained within the written word of the Bible are insufficient to build an ark. At least not the kind we’ve been groomed to believe via artist misrepresentation.
Verse 6:14 contains the following unknowns or poorly translated words:
Gopher-wood, Gopher is an unknown type of tree (When I say unknown, even Hebrew scholars are uncertain);
ark, ark is another unusual word it means chest or box, but more likely basket and one stable enough to float life in it as Moses’ “basket” is the same word, perhaps implying a curved lozenge-like basket with a lid;
rooms, this word is nearly always poorly translated as it really means nest/cells/cubicles (cubicles in the sense of the kind found on an antique roll top desk).
One word is absolutely clear and that is “pitch” or tar. The verb “cover over” gives reference to the Atonement and sin offering at the altar. It is a very interesting word choice, no?
The pitch is to cover the entire Ark inside and out. At the very least the Ark is black on the outside, not raw or stained wood as shown in photos.
In verse 15, the word you highlight as “length” is used in reference to the tabernacle, the Hebrew desert temple. It also implies forbearance and self-restraint. Interesting, no?
Long/length is something at its greatest dimension, so that the Ark image God must have shown Noah could end at a point or a semi-major axis like an ellipse. The width being the semi-minor axis. A lozenge-shape would float on or under the water, depending on the load, and would be pitched inside and out, forming a water-tight seal.
What about interior light?
The phrase in verse 16 translated as “opening for daylight” is very bad Hebrew. It is most likely a lighted or miraculously illuminated stone. Challôwn stated later in chpt. 8 is the accurate Hebrew for window. If it hung from a roof, then it would be a roof 18” above the gunwale, if the ark had a toe kick or a deck. I don’t believe it had a deck at all. The Bible gives no evidence that Noah walked outside or around a deck on the Ark.
The opening needn’t be a regular door either. Placing it directly in the side doesn’t make sense, nautically speaking, but it might if it were the top hatch on a lozenge-shaped craft. It’s the same with the levels. Your translation calls them decks, but that word doesn’t appear in the Hebrew. It does say depth, beside or another or second, and third which can also mean 1/3.
Take a look here: http://biblehub.com/text/genesis/6-16.htm
It’s a great resource so as not to misinterpret what the Scriptures really say. I believed just like you that the Ark looked like it’s been drawn or made over the years. Then I found out the Bible says different, when I researched it for myself.
The most shocking thing is the pitch. It’s all black all over.