Gopher Wood

Biblical Text

Gopher wood appears in the flood narrative of Genesis 6. God tells Noah that He will judge the earth with a flood because of the violence that fills it. He then commands Noah to build an ark and specifies the material to be used. The New Korean Revised Version renders the word in Genesis 6:14 as "gopher wood" (gopeureu namu), transliterating the Hebrew. The King James Version reads: "Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch." Pitch is a sticky substance used to seal the seams of a vessel so that it does not leak. The verses that follow give instructions for the ark's length, breadth, and height, as well as its window, door, and decks.

Meaning and Translation of the Word

The word gopher occurs only once in the entire Hebrew Old Testament, in this verse. Because there are no other occurrences for comparison, it cannot be determined precisely which tree it denotes. Scholars have proposed candidates such as trees of the cypress family, cedar, and resinous conifers such as pines, but there is no consensus.

Ancient translations also rendered the word differently. The Greek Old Testament, the Septuagint, is reported to have translated it as "squared timber," and the Latin Vulgate as "planed (smoothed) timber." In effect, both understood the term as describing how the wood was worked rather than what kind of tree it came from. The King James Version transliterated the original as "gopher wood." Among Korean Bibles, the Korean Revised Version (1961) translated the word as jatnamu (Korean pine), while the New Korean Revised Version changed it to gopeureu namu, preserving the sound of the original.

Significance in the Whole of Scripture

The term gopher wood does not appear in the New Testament. The account of the ark and the flood, however, is taken up in several places:

• In Matthew 24:37-39, Jesus compares the days of Noah to the coming of the Son of man.
• Hebrews 11:7 states that Noah prepared the ark by faith.
• 1 Peter 3:20-21 connects the saving of eight souls through water with baptism.

Some early church fathers read the ark as a type (a figure foreshadowing something to come) of the church. Some also linked the "wood" of the ark, which saved those aboard, with the cross.

Interpretations and Issues

• Identity of the wood: The text gives only the name of the wood and says nothing about its appearance or place of origin. Explanations that identify it with a specific species are scholarly conjectures.
• Pitch and atonement: In the same verse, "pitch" (kopher) and "to coat" (kaphar) share the same consonants as "to atone" (kipper). For this reason, some interpreters connect the pitch with atonement. Others object, however, that shared consonants alone do not establish a connection in meaning.
• Extrabiblical claims: Claims have repeatedly been made that pieces of wood from the ark have been found in the region of Mount Ararat. None, however, has been confirmed by scholars. Such claims should be distinguished from the content of the biblical text.

In the Korean Church

In sermons on the ark, the New Korean Revised Version's expression "gopher wood" is commonly quoted verbatim. Some preachers interpret the ark as the church or the place of salvation and the pitch as Christ's atonement. Such readings reflect the preacher's own typological interpretation.