2866: Gopher Wood: An Etymological Mystery pt. 1 Oct 25, 2024

There are numerous untranslated—potentially untranslatable—words from Biblical Hebrew, typically in the realm of natural items like plants, animals, and minerals. One such example is גפר, the type of wood used for Noah’s Ark. The sentence structure itself is somewhat notable insofar as עשה לך תבת עצי־גפר (Make for yourself a box of woods/trees of gopher) is plural—atypical for mass nouns— but it is definitely a tree type. 

The main candidate for what this would have been is, in English, the cypress. The name of this tree, specifically the Mediterranean cypress, is traceable to Ancient Greek κύπρος but that itself appears to be of semitic origin, potentially related to the Akkadian kupru, denoting a type of aromatic tree sap, and would be related to the root גפר.

This is part one. There will be more on this root tomorrow.