Noah in rabbinic literature When Noah and his family and everything that he had taken with him were inside the ark, the people left outside asked him to admit them too, promising repentance. Noah refused to admit them, objecting that he had exhorted them to repent many years before the Flood. The people then assembled in great numbers around the ark in order to break into it; but they were destroyed by the lions and other wild animals which also surrounded it (Tanhuma., Noah, 10; Genesis Rabba 32.14; "Sefer haYashar", l.c.). Noah was constantly occupied in the ark; for he had to attend to
Philistine captivity of the Ark which was 'volunteered' to take the Ark (vv. 10b-12). The text explicitly ascribes the plague to "Yahweh's hand" (1 Samuel 5:6). In Ashdod, when the Ark was placed in the temple of Dagon, the statue of Dagon was found prostrate in front of the Ark the next morning; after the statue of Dagon was restored to its place, it was again found prostrate the next morning, and this time its head and hands had also been broken off. Leithart provides a number of parallels between the Philistine captivity of the Ark and the Plagues of Egypt in the Book of