Page:Legends of Old Testament Characters.djvu/110

88 "When the time prescribed for the punishment of men was arrived, and the oven began to boil and vomit, we said to Noah: Take and bring into the ark two couples of every kind of animal, male and female, with all your family, except him who has been condemned by your mouth, and receive the faithful, and even the unbelievers; but few only will enter." The interpreters of the Koran say that the ark was built in two years. They give it the dimensions mentioned in Genesis:—three stages, that on the top for the birds, the middle one for the men and the provisions, whilst the beasts occupied the hold. The sign of the outburst of the Flood was that water flowed out of the burning oven of Noah's wife. Then all the veins and arteries of the earth broke and spirted out water. He who was excluded was Canaan, the son of Ham, whom he had cursed. But Abulfeda says that it was Jam, a fourth son of Noah, who was excluded from the ark. The Persians say that Ham incurred his father's malediction as well, and, for that, he and his posterity became black and were enslaved; but that Noah, grieved for his son's progeny, prayed God to have mercy on them, and God made the slave to be loved and cherished by his master. The Koran says, "Noah having entered the ark with his wife (Noema, daughter of Enoch, according to the Yaschar; Noria, according to the Gnostics; Vesta, according to the Cabbalists), and his three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and their wives, the three daughters of Eliakim, son of Methuselah, he said to those who dwell on the earth, 'Embark in the name of the Lord.'

"And whilst he thus spake, the ark advanced or halted, according to his order, in the name of God."

But the Yaschar says that the ungodly dwellers on the earth, finding the Flood rising, hastened in such crowds to the ark, that they would have overfilled it, had not the lions and other animals within defended the entrance and repulsed them.

According to some Oriental traditions, Noah embarked at Koufah; according to others, near where Babylon was afterwards erected; but some say in India; and some affirm that in the six months during which the Deluge lasted, the ark made the circuit of the world.