Elm

In Isaiah’s description of the idol carver’s work, we find a sentence that says “he plants a cedar and the rain nourishes it” (Hebrew nata‘ ’oren wegeshem yegadel). The clause “and the rain nourishes it” has always seemed strange in the context. So Zohary emends geshem (“rain”) here to read neshem, which is the word for the Hairy Elm (Ulmus canescens) in Arabic. Given the very close similarity between the letters nun and gimel in Hebrew, and the syntax, it is tempting to conclude that another tree is being suggested. According to Zohary’s emendation, there is a possible parallelism between tirzah we’allon (“stone pine and oak”) in Isaiah 44:14 a and ’oren weneshem (“laurel and elm”) in Isaiah 44:14 b. Zohary’s hypothesis is based on the assumption that the original Hebrew word was similar to the Arabic word neshem (that is, beginning with the letter nun), and that a scribe at some point substituted the gimel for the very similar letter nun of the original text. I know of no Bible scholar who has considered this possibility. The Septuagint says “rain.”

The KJV translation of ’elah as “elm” in Hosea 4:13 is botanically incorrect. It should be “terebinth.”