“Make yourself an ark…and cover (kaphartta) it inside and out with pitch.”
This act of covering signifies purification and propitiation. In Exodus and Leviticus, the covering of the Ark of the Covenant is called the kipperot. It is the fundamental place of expiation of sin. The act of ‘covering’ purifies Noah’s ark, protecting it from the chaos that is about to be unleashed by sin. The ark will be a miniature cosmos, preserving creation from un-creation.
This is the image by which those who are ‘baptized into Christ’ are saved from the wrath that is to come. Christ, who became for us an ‘expiation’ (Romans 3: 25—the Greek hilasterion translates kipperot), covers our sins, purifying us in order that we may be preserved for the new creation.