What material did God tell Noah to use for building the Ark?

Genesis says Noah was to build the Ark from gopher wood. Genesis 6:14 uses the Hebrew term “gopher wood,” but its exact botanical meaning is uncertain, so many translations retain the phrase rather than identifying a modern tree species.

The same instruction tells Noah to make rooms in the ark and cover it inside and outside with pitch. Pitch would have helped waterproof the vessel’s wooden structure. Genesis then gives its length, width, and height, creating a compact set of construction instructions within the Flood narrative.

Readers sometimes replace gopher wood with cedar, cypress, or another familiar timber because those woods were important in ancient shipbuilding. However, the biblical text does not identify gopher wood with certainty as any one of those species. “Cypress” appears in some proposed interpretations, not as a universally established translation.

The material’s uncertainty is a language question, not evidence that the text names several woods. The safest canonical answer is the exact phrase “gopher wood,” preserving the wording used in Genesis.