In the biblical story of Noah's Ark, God tells Noah to build the ark from gopher wood.
The instruction appears in Genesis 6:14, where Noah is told to make an ark from gopher wood and cover it inside and out with pitch. The Hebrew phrase is unusual, and the exact identity of the wood has never been established with certainty.
Many proposed translations have been suggested, including cypress, cedar, and resinous wood, but none is universally accepted. “Gopher wood” remains the traditional English wording in many Bible translations because it preserves the distinctive term rather than assigning it a modern species.
The ark narrative does not describe a known archaeological vessel or provide botanical evidence identifying the material. The word is therefore best treated as a textual designation, not as the confirmed name of a tree. Pitch was used to make the vessel watertight.