(14) Make yourself an ark of gopher wood; make it an ark with compartments, and cover it inside and out with pitch.

AND SHALT PITCH IT. Some say that ve-khafarta (and shalt pitch) comes from the same root as kapporet (cover) (Ex. 25:17), the meaning of and shalt pitch it being you shall cover it by coating it. [PITCH.] Some say that kofer is a pitch-like substance. Others say that a certain clay with pitch-like qualities is found in the ground and is to be identified with the kofer in our verse. Others identify it with a substance similarly called in Arabic while noting that in Arabic it is spelled with a kof rather than a caf. In reality, ve-khafarta (and shalt pitch) is a denominative of kofer.

(3) They said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and burn them hard.”—Brick served them as stone, and bitumen served them as mortar.— (4) And they said, “Come, let us build us a city, and a tower with its top in the sky, to make a name for ourselves; else we shall be scattered all over the world.”

לבנים BRICKS — For there is no stone in Babel which is a plain.

ונשרפה לשרפה AND BURN THEM THOROUGHLY — This is how bricks, which in old French are called Tuiles, English tiles, are made: they fire them in a furnace.

AND SHALT PITCH IT. Some say that ve-khafarta (and shalt pitch) comes from the same root as kapporet (cover) (Ex. 25:17), the meaning of and shalt pitch it being you shall cover it by coating it. [PITCH.] Some say that kofer is a pitch-like substance. Others say that a certain clay with pitch-like qualities is found in the ground and is to be identified with the kofer in our verse. Others identify it with a substance similarly called in Arabic while noting that in Arabic it is spelled with a kof rather than a caf. In reality, ve-khafarta (and shalt pitch) is a denominative of kofer.

(2) The woman conceived and bore a son; and when she saw how beautiful he was, she hid him for three months. (3) When she could hide him no longer, she got a wicker basket for him and caulked it with bitumen and pitch. She put the child into it and placed it among the reeds by the bank of the Nile.

בכפר WITH כפר — This is an Aramaic term for the Hebrew זפת “pitch’’, and in the Talmud (Shabbat 67a) we find the noun כופרא “pitch”. In the case of the ark (cradle) in which Moses was placed, since the waters were not rapid it sufficed that it should be daubed with slime inside and with pitch outside; and a further reason for this was that this righteous person (Moses) should not smell the bad odour of the pitch (Sotah 12a). Here, however, because of the rough waters he had to cover it with pitch inside as well as outside.

The verse states: “And when she could no longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with bitumen and with pitch; and she put the child therein, and laid it in the willows by the river’s bank” (Exodus 2:3). The Gemara asks: What is different about bulrushes that she decided to use them? Rabbi Elazar says: From here it is derived concerning righteous people that their money is more precious to them than their bodies, as she took an inexpensive material to build the ark. And why do they care so much about their money? Because they do not stretch out their hands to partake of stolen property. Therefore, their own property is very precious to them.

Rabbi Shmuel bar Naḥmani says an alternative reason for her taking bulrushes for the ark: She took a soft material like bulrush, which is able to withstand an impact both before a soft item and before a hard item. She feared that if she would have made the box from a hard material like wood, if it were to collide with a hard item in the water it might break.

The verse continues: “And daubed it with bitumen and with pitch” (Exodus 2:3). A Sage teaches: She daubed bitumen on the interior and pitch on the exterior, so that righteous person, i.e., Moses, would not smell a foul odor, such as that of pitch.