“Make yourself an ark…and cover it inside and out with pitch.”
(Here is the first part of the scholion on this verse.)
God’s instructions to Noah indicate that the ark is a miniature cosmos. God is the ‘Divine Geometer’: just as He created the cosmos by ‘drawing a circle on the deep’ and ‘marking out the foundations of the earth’ [Prv. 8: 27, 29], so the ark is harmonious, measured, proportioned. The same can be said of the Ark of the Covenant, the Temple, and even of Jerusalem as a whole: “Walk through Zion, walk all round it; count the number of its towers.” [Ps. 48: 12]
All these holy spaces must be kept pure. When the sin of Jerusalem grew too great, God withdrew His presence, and the city fell. Let this not be said of the new temple of our bodies.