In the biblical Noah’s Ark account, Noah used pitch to seal the ark against water.
Genesis 6:14 instructs Noah to make the ark from gopher wood and cover it inside and outside with pitch. Pitch is a general term for a sticky waterproofing substance, often associated with bitumen or tar in ancient building contexts. The instruction would have helped make the wooden vessel watertight.
The biblical Hebrew term is related to the idea of covering or coating, and translations differ in how they render some construction vocabulary. “Pitch” is the standard English term in many major Bible translations, while some versions use wording such as “bitumen” or “tar.”
This detail is separate from the wood species. Genesis names the coating material clearly enough in translation, but it does not identify gopher wood with a securely known modern tree species.