The Building of the Ark
Noach builds an ark of gopher wood — 300 cubits long, 50 wide, 30 high, in three decks — and does it in full view of everyone.
The instructions read like a blueprint: «Make yourself an ark of gopher wood, make compartments in the ark, and cover it inside and out with pitch. Three hundred cubits long, fifty wide, thirty high. Make a tzohar for the ark, finish it to a cubit at the top, set its door in its side, and make it with lower, second and third decks.» This is not a ship: no sail, no rudder, no oar. It does not sail — it stays afloat.
Inside go Noach, his wife, his three sons — Shem, Cham and Yefet — and their wives: eight people. And the animals: seven pairs of the pure, one pair of the impure, birds, and food for all of them. The sages dwell on the logistics: a year of feeding every living thing, each at its own hour with its own food, sleepless work — and it is this, not the storm, that wears Noach down.
What matters most is that the work was public. The ark could have appeared ready-made; Noach was told to build it slowly, by hand, so the generation would watch and ask.