In the Genesis flood narrative, what was the Ark’s main building material?

In the Genesis flood narrative, the Ark’s main building material was gopher wood. Genesis 6:14 tells Noah to make the Ark from this wood before describing its internal divisions and waterproof coating.

“Gopher wood” is the traditional English rendering of the Hebrew phrase. The Bible does not identify the term with a securely known modern tree species, so translations and commentators have proposed possibilities such as cypress or other durable woods.

This uncertainty is sometimes overlooked when retellings present cypress as a definite answer. Cypress is a historical proposal, not a species explicitly named by Genesis. The text’s certainty concerns the phrase itself, while the botanical identity remains unresolved.

Genesis also says the Ark was coated with pitch inside and outside. That waterproofing material is a separate construction detail and should not be confused with the wood used to build the vessel.