In the Noah story, the Hebrew word commonly translated as “ark” is tebah.
The Hebrew noun תֵּבָה, transliterated tebah, appears in the Flood narrative for Noah’s vessel. It is also used in the story of Moses, where the infant Moses is placed in a basket. This unusual shared vocabulary links the two stories at the level of biblical language.
Tebah is not the ordinary Hebrew word for the Ark of the Covenant. That sacred chest is called an aron, a different noun. Confusing these terms can lead to inaccurate claims that Noah’s vessel and the later covenant chest have the same Hebrew name.
English translations render tebah as “ark,” “box,” or “chest” depending on context and translation tradition. The translation “ark” became especially familiar through the King James Bible and later English usage, but the original word itself is a concise Hebrew term for a protective container or vessel.