TH-B-H -- ‘shelter, refuge; incubator, womb for creative desire’

While the various translations see only the material form of the concept of thebah, that of a vessel, in terms of a physical or even figurative ‘boat’ or ‘ship’, the term is a more complex one, with various and subtle meanings. It has most generally and significantly the meaning of a vessel in the sense of a refuge or shelter for life or Creation itself.

It appears to be the Samaritan translator who, rendering this word by, … a vessel, was the first to give rise to all the absurd ideas that this error has brought forth. Never has the Hebrew word תבה signified a vessel, in the sense of a ship, as it has since been understood; but a vessel in the sense of a thing destined to contain and to preserve another. This word, which is found in all the ancient mythologies, merits particular attention. It has so many significations that it is difficult to assign a definite one. It is, on the one hand, the symbolic name given by the Egyptians to their sacred city, Theba, considered as the shelter, the refuge, the abode of the gods; that famous city whose name transported into Greece to a straggling village of Beotia, [Thebes] has sufficed to immortalize it. (The Hebraic Tongue Restored, Fabré d’Olivet, p. 191)

The various roots that make up the word have the sense of the generative power, of fructification, of will forces, of love and desire forces that propel us forward.

It is first its analogue אב, developing the general idea of fructification, of generation, of paternity; then, it is that of the will, in אנה ; that of love, in אהב…(The Hebraic Tongue Restored, Fabré d’Olivet, p. 191-192)

In essence, the ark is that power of creation operating via desire, the very essence of Creation and of the Creator.

..finally, without seeking to link with this root any other signs than the one which enters into the composition of the word תבח, it is the action of being moved in oneself, of returning, of retiring into, of withdrawing to oneself through desire, in the three verbs תוב, תובב, and תאוב : it is even the name of the Universe, in the compound תבל. One cannot see in all this, either the coffer of the Hellenists, or the chest of the Latin translator, “arca.” (The Hebraic Tongue Restored, Fabré d’Olivet, p. 192).

Thus, the refuge, or ‘ark’, is a critical aspect of the ‘equilibrium of nature’, NCH (Noah), being a capacity for the extraction of all the life principles contained within nature, and their liberation according to the profound desire of the Divine Mind, a desire to bring about a transformation within Creation for the greater unfolding and evolution of that unit of human consciousness, containing within the very power of emergent evolution, named ADM.