Laurel (bay tree)

The Laurel Laurus nobilis is the source of bay leaf used in European cooking up to today. It must have been common in Israel in biblical times, and was used for oil, as a spice in food, and in medicine. It has a fresh, pleasing smell. It was abundant in Carmel, where it is plentiful to the present, and on the other mountains, Tabor, Gilead and Hermon. However, we only have two very debatable references to the laurel tree in the Bible. One is Isaiah 44:14, which refers to the making of idols: “… he plants ’oren [‘cedar’ in RSV ] and the rain nourishes it.” The other is Psalm 37:35, where the Hebrew word ‘oritz may not refer to a plant at all. In Isaiah 44:14 the letter n in the Hebrew word ’oren was marked as suspicious by the Masoretes, leading later scholars to take the root ’ar as a reference to ’erez (“cedar”). However, the reading ’oren is probably correct.

Although ’oren is used in modern Hebrew for the pine tree, the Aramaic translation, Targum Jonathan, has ’aranye in this passage, the Arabic equivalent of which is ’ar. Post-biblical writers use the name ’ar for “laurel.” The botanist Thompson associates the Akkadian word ’eru with the laurel. Zohary follows this line of thinking, and assumes that the biblical writers could not have ignored such a useful and lovely tree, so he implicitly advocates using it in Isaiah 44:14. Similarly, the botanist Moldenke favors laurel for ‘oritz in Psalm 37:35 (RSV “overbearing”), but no version has followed that. KJV ’s “ash” for ’oren in Isaiah 44:14 is unsupported, although a type of ash known as the Syrian Ash Fraxinus syriaca is fairly common in Israel and may have been known in Bible times.