According to Warren and Palmer, the Holy Bible describes God's command to Noah concerning the ark, "Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch." (Genesis 6:14) This description tends to imply that this second set of Jaredite barges might have been caulked with pitch, for "they were tight like unto the ark of Noah" (Ether 6:7). The Sumerians at the time of Jared were acquainted with the use of asphalt for caulking. [Bruce W. Warren and David A. Palmer, The Jaredite Saga, ch. 5, unpublished]
“They Were Tight Like Unto the Ark of Noah”
In Ether 6:7 it says that the vessels of the Jaredites:
"were tight like unto the ark of Noah. Therefore when they were encompassed about by many waters they did cry unto the Lord, and he did bring them forth again upon the top of the waters."
According to Hugh Nibley this aspect of the ark is not specifically mentioned in the Bible, and has led to great confusion among Bible illustrators, ancient medieval, and modern. The only peculiarities mentioned in the brief three verses of Genesis (6:14-16) are the window and the door; but they, combined with persistent traditions about the ark, were enough to perplex the learned for generation. They lead us directly to the most puzzling problem of all--that of the illumination of the ark, for while the window is called as zohar (more properly tsohar), i.e., shiner or illuminator, in the Hebrew versions, the Babylonian word for it is nappashi, meaning breather or ventilator. Of course all windows have the double function of lighting (hence the common fenester--"Light giver"), and ventilation ("Window"), but in a boat equipped to go under water other sources for both would have to be found, and it is in the lighting department that the Jewish sources are most specific. For the Rabbis do not settle for the zohar--the lighter of the Ark--as being simply a window: for some of them it was rather a miraculous light-giving stone. Its purpose, however, was not to furnish illumination as such, but to provide Noah with a means of distinguishing night from day. It is in that connection that the Rabbis come to mention the stone, for a very important point in the observation of the Law is to determine the exact moment at which night ends and day begins, and vice versa. The Rabbis, according to the Midrash Rabbah, "could not explain the meaning of zohar," but they did know that it had something to do with light in the ark. Rabbi Akiba ben Kahmana, for example, says it was a skylight, while Rabbi Levi said it was a precious stone. He quotes R Phineas as saying that "during the whole twelve months that Noah was in the ark he did not require the light of the sun by day or the moon by night, but he had a polished gem which he hung up; when it was dim he knew that it was day, and when it shone he knew it was night." . . . But all such stories seem to go back to a single source, a brief notice in the Jerushalmi or Palestinian Talmud, which reports that Noah was able to distinguish day from night by certain precious stones he possessed, which became dim by day and shone forth by night.
Plainly we have here statements which could have given Joseph Smith some hints in writing about the shining stones . . . unfortunately the Palestine Talmud remains a rare and difficult book. Only the most eminent Rabbis ever read or cite it. [Hugh Nibley, "Strange and Shining Stones," in A Book of Mormon Treasury, pp. 140-142] [See the commentary on Ether 6:2]