What Is Bitumen in the Bible?
Object
A black, sticky mixture, like tar. It was used to hold bricks together and to seal boats so that water would not get in.
It can mean
- Careful: it is not a paint or a polish: it is a natural tar.
- To “caulk”: to seal the cracks of a boat or a basket.
Where it appears in the Bible
Genesis 11:3; Exodus 2:3
What the Bible says
Genesis 11:3
And each one said to his neighbour: Come, let us make brick, and bake them with fire. And they had brick instead of stones, and slime instead of mortar.
Exodus 2:3
And when she could hide him no longer, she took a basket made of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and pitch: and put the little babe therein, and laid him in the sedges by the river’s brink,
Douay-Rheims Bible (Challoner revision), public domain.
Source: RAE, “betún” and “calafatear”