A well-known beautiful evergreen, growing in many parts of Europe and Asia. Its wood is highly prized by engravers. The word employed in , is thought by many to have been a species of cedar. It is used as an emblem of the abiding grace and prosperity of the church of God.\par
Box Tree. A tree of very hard wood and glossy leaves, which grew to a height of about 6 meters (20 feet). A native of northern Palestine and the Lebanon mountains, the box tree was well suited to beautify the Temple ( ). The box tree was used since Roman times for wood engravings and musical instruments. Isaiah symbolically used the box tree, along with other trees, to remind the Hebrews of God's perpetual presence ( -20).
Some scholars have suggested that the box tree of Scripture may instead be the cypress or plane. Also see Chestnut.
Box-tree (; ). It is not very certain that the box-tree is really denoted by the Hebrew and so translated: but nothing more probable has been suggested, and it agrees well enough with the indications afforded by the texts in which the name occurs.
The box is a native of most parts of Europe. It grows well in England, as at Boxhill, etc. while that from the Levant is most valued in commerce, in consequence of its being highly esteemed by wood-engravers. Turkey box is yielded by Buxus Balearica, a species which is found in Minorca, Sardinia, and Corsica, and also in both European and Asiatic Turkey, and is imported from Constantinople, Smyrna, and the Black Sea. Box is also found on Mount Caucasus, and a species extends even to the Himalaya Mountains. It is much employed in the present day by the wood-engraver, the turner, carver, mathematical instrument maker, and the comb and flute maker.
The box-tree, being a native of mountainous regions, was peculiarly adapted to the calcareous formations of Mount Lebanon, and therefore likely to be brought from thence with the coniferous woods for the building of the temple, and was as well suited as the fir and the pine trees for changing the face of the desert.
תאשור , Isa 41:9; Isa 60:13; Eze 27:6; 2Es 14:24, where the word appears to be used for tablets. Most of the ancient, and several of the modern, translators, render this word the buxus, or “box tree;” but from its being mentioned along with trees of the forest, some more stately tree must be intended, probably the cedar.