Gopher wood or gopherwood is a term used once in the Bible for the material used to construct Noah's ark. 6:14 states that Noah was instructed to build the Ark of ({{Script/Hebrew|גֹפֶר), commonly transliterated as wood, a word not otherwise used in the Bible or the Hebrew language in general. Although some English Bibles attempt a translation, older English translations such as the King James Version (17th century) leave it untranslated. The word is unrelated to the North American animal known as the gopher.[1]
The Greek Septuagint (3rd–1st centuries BC) translated the phrase mentioning gopher wood as Greek, Ancient (to 1453);: ἐκ ξύλων τετραγώνων, 'out of squared timber', translating gofer as squared. [2] Similarly, the Latin Vulgate (5th century AD) rendered it as Latin: de lignis levigatis (Latin: lævigatis, in the spelling of the Clementine Vulgate), 'of timber planks'.
The Jewish Encyclopedia states that it was most likely a translation of the Babylonian, 'cedar beams', or the Assyrian, 'reeds'.[3] The Aramaic Targum Onkelos, considered by many Jews to be an authoritative translation of the Hebrew scripture, renders this word as, 'cedar'. The Syriac Peshitta translates this word as, 'box'.[4]
Many modern English translations favor cypress (otherwise referred to in Biblical Hebrew as). This was espoused (among others) by Adam Clarke, a Methodist theologian famous for his commentary on the Bible: Clarke cited a resemblance between the Greek word for cypress,, and the Hebrew word . Likewise, the Latin: [[Nova Vulgata]] (20th century) has it as Latin: de lignis cupressinis ('out of cypress wood').
Others, noting the visual similarity between the Hebrew letters g (gimel) and k (kaf), suggest that the word may actually be, the Hebrew word meaning 'pitch'; thus wood would be 'pitched wood'. Recent suggestions have included a lamination process (to strengthen the Ark), or a now-lost type of tree, but there is no consensus.[5]