Date palm
Plants and Trees in the Bible
The date palm typically grows to a height of 10–20 meters (33–66 feet) and has a cluster of immense leaves at the top. Each year, old leaves wither and droop, and people who own palms cut the old branches off. The tightly packed bunch of immature leaves is called lulav in Hebrew. Date palms start bearing fruit at around five to eight years of age. The sweet fruits, a little smaller than a human thumb, grow in large bunches. Inside the soft fruit is a very hard seed about 2.5 centimeters (1 inch) long. Date palm trees are either male or female, and there are places where the trees of one sex grow but no fruit is seen, because they lack pollination. Farmers prefer to propagate them by cultivating the suckers that grow at the base of the tree, rather than from seeds, which would produce too many male trees. The fruit appears on the female tree in the summer (June-August).
Pictures
In the Bible
The Hebrew and Greek words for it, and every verse where each is used
Tree
תָּמָר tamar · 12 verses
תֹּמֶר tomer · 1 verse
תִּמֹרָה timorah · 16 verses
φοῖνιξ phoinix · 6 verses
Branch
כִּפָּה kipah · 3 verses
βαΐνη bainē · 1 verse
βάϊον baion · 2 verses
What it stands for
In (7) we find the palm used as a symbol of elegance and grace. In we are told that the righteous will flourish like the palm tree, but says the wicked will wither like a dry palm branch. The palm is one of the four special species listed in in connection with the Festival of Shelters. Tamar was a popular Hebrew name, mentioned in several books of the Bible (for example, ). In the palm branch is a symbol of peace, but in it is a symbol of victory (so also ; ; ).
More about it
More than forty types of date palm (Phoenix dactylifera) are found in dry tropical countries all the way from the Canary Islands, across Africa to India. They probably originated in the Middle East (Zohary and Hopf), where they are still found in abundance. In we read that the branches of date palms were to be used for the Festival of Shelters, and in people welcomed Jesus with date palm leaves. In the latter case there is a legitimate question of where they got the leaves, since Jerusalem is rather too high and cold for date palms. But the same could be asked about the prophetess Deborah’s palm (), which was located between Ramah and Bethel, scarcely lower than Jerusalem. Jericho was known as the “city of palm trees” (temarim in Hebrew - ). Date fruits were eaten fresh or dried and pressed into “cakes,” and they were sometimes made into a drink. It is possible that in the Hebrew word devash that we normally take as “honey” refers to a syrup made from dates. The leaves were and are used for mats, baskets, fences, and roofs. Date palms are now cultivated intensively in the Jordan and Aravah valleys, around the Dead Sea, and on the coastal plain of Israel. The word “date” entered English from Latin dactylus via Old French datil. Latin got it from Greek daktylos, meaning “finger.”
Also in Domestic trees and shrubs
Sources
Plants and Trees in the Bible, Animals in the Bible and Human-made Things in the Bible © United Bible Societies, 2025 (adapted from Each According to its Kind: Plants and Trees in the Bible by Robert Koops, All Creatures Great and Small: Living Things in the Bible by Edward R. Hope, and The Works of Their Hands: Man-made Things in the Bible by Ray Pritz), CC BY-SA 4.0; adapted for eRhema