Box-Tree

Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible

Box-Tree ( teashshûr ,   Isaiah 41:19;   Isaiah 60:13 ,   Ezekiel 27:6 ). Whether the teashshûr was the box-tree ( Buxus longifolia ) or the sherbin , mod. Arab. [Note: Arabic.] for the cypress ( Cupressus sempervirens ), as RV [Note: Revised Version.] adopts, or, as others propose, a kind of juniper, is quite unsettled. So good an authority as Post rejects the first as improbable.

E. W. G. Masterman.

American Tract Society Bible Dictionary

A well-known beautiful evergreen, growing in many parts of Europe and Asia. Its wood is highly prized by engravers. The word employed in  Isaiah 60:13 , is thought by many to have been a species of cedar. It is used as an emblem of the abiding grace and prosperity of the church of God.

Morrish Bible Dictionary

What tree is referred to under the name teashshur is not known: the ancient versions translate it 'cedar, fir, poplar,' etc. It is probably a species of cedar, called sherbin in the East.  Isaiah 41:19;  Isaiah 60:13 .

Easton's Bible Dictionary

 Isaiah 60:13 41:19 Ezekiel 27:6

Kitto's Popular Cyclopedia of Biblial Literature

Box-tree ( Isaiah 60:13;  Isaiah 41:19). It is not very certain that the box-tree is really denoted by the Hebrew and so translated: but nothing more probable has been suggested, and it agrees well enough with the indications afforded by the texts in which the name occurs.

The box is a native of most parts of Europe. It grows well in England, as at Boxhill, etc. while that from the Levant is most valued in commerce, in consequence of its being highly esteemed by wood-engravers. Turkey box is yielded by Buxus Balearica, a species which is found in Minorca, Sardinia, and Corsica, and also in both European and Asiatic Turkey, and is imported from Constantinople, Smyrna, and the Black Sea. Box is also found on Mount Caucasus, and a species extends even to the Himalaya Mountains. It is much employed in the present day by the wood-engraver, the turner, carver, mathematical instrument maker, and the comb and flute maker.

The box-tree, being a native of mountainous regions, was peculiarly adapted to the calcareous formations of Mount Lebanon, and therefore likely to be brought from thence with the coniferous woods for the building of the temple, and was as well suited as the fir and the pine trees for changing the face of the desert.

International Standard Bible Encyclopedia

box´trē ( תּאשׁוּר , te'ashshūr  ;  Isaiah 41:19;  Isaiah 60:13 , "boxwood"  Ezekiel 27:6 ): A tree of uncertain identity, which must once have been common in the forests of Lebanon. According to Post ( HDB , I, 313), "The only species of box found in Bible lands is Buxus longifolia , which is a shrub from 2 to 3 ft. high. It does not grow South of Mt. Cassius and it is unlikely that it did in historical times."

As an alternative to the box the cypress, Cupressus sempervirens - known in Arabic as Sherbı̄n - has been suggested. It is a fine tree and was probably once plentiful, but as it seems to answer to the berosh (see Fir ), it cannot well be the te'ashshūr ̌ . There is nothing certain to go upon.