teil tree Summary and Overview

(an old name for the lime-tree, the tilia), Isa. 6:13, the terebinth, or turpentine-tree, the Pistacia terebinthus of botanists. The Hebrew word here used (elah) is rendered oak (q.v.) in Gen. 35:4; Judg. 6:11, 19; Isa. 1:29, etc. In Isa. 61:3 it is rendered in the plural "trees;" Hos. 4:13, "elm" (R.V., "terebinth"). Hos. 4:13, "elm" (R.V., "terebinth"). In 1 Sam. 17:2, 19 it is taken as a proper name, "Elah" (R.V. marg., "terebinth"). "The terebinth of Mamre, or its lineal successor, remained from the days of Abraham till the fourth century of the Christian era, and on its site Constantine erected a Christian church, the ruins of which still remain." This tree "is seldom seen in clumps or groves, never in forests, but stands isolated and weird-like in some bare ravine or on a hill-side where nothing else towers above the low brushwood" (Tristram).

[OAK]

TEIL TREE . The word thus rendered in Isa 6:13 is translated "elm" in Hos 4:13 and "oak" in many passages, which are mentioned under Oaks. See also Nuts. In most, perhaps all, of these places the terebinth (Pistacia of several species) is doubtless meant. This tree has pinnate leaves, small red berries, and belongs to the order of the sumac. According to the writer's observation, the terebinth was most abundant in the North of Palestine, and especially above Lake Merom, where some of these trees were very symmetrical, dense, and spreading, with luxuriant foliage of a blue-green, affording a delightful shelter, if not appropriated as Arab burying-places. Such specimens show that the terebinth, if suffered to reach age, is a noble tree, and that Absalom might easily have been caught in riding under one of them. It is an Eastern idea that this tree lives a thousand years, and when it dies the race is renewed by young shoots from the root; so that the tree may, in a sense, be called perpetual. Hence the allusion in Isa 6:13. "In Smyrna, Constantinople, and other Eastern cities the cypress overshadows the Muslim's grave, but the terebinth the Armenian's. They say that this homeless people brought this tree with them from the shores of Lake Van, and love to see those who are dear to them sheltered in their last sleep by its ancestral shade." - Warburton.