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Bible Dictionaries
Sycamore
Fausset's Bible Dictionary
or Luke 19:4. Often planted by the wayside for shade. Τristram ("Land of Israel") found an old sycamore at the broken aqueduct of Herod's Jericho. The fig mulberry or sycamore fig (Amos 7:14). (See SYCAMINE.) The size of a walnut tree; the leaves heart shaped, downy underneath and fragrant; the fruit growing in clusters on little sprigs from the trunk. Amos was a gatherer employed about sycamore fruit (Hebrew); but Septuagint makes him a "puncturer (knizon ) of sycamore fruit." Pliny says they made an incision in the fruit when of a certain size, and on the fourth day it ripened. The KJV is compatible with the Hebrew. If not gathered, it spoils by gnats. It is inferior to the fig. The tree is always green, and bears fruit often throughout the year, so that it is of much value to the poor. The wood, though porous, is durable, and suffers neither from moisture nor heat; Egyptian mummy coffins of it are sound after entombment for thousands of years. The destruction of sycamore trees by hailstones was among Egypt's heavy losses (margin Psalms 78:47). David had an overseer over his sycamore trees (1 Chronicles 26:28; compare also 1 Kings 10:27).
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Fausset, Andrew R. Entry for 'Sycamore'. Fausset's Bible Dictionary. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/fbd/s/sycamore.html. 1949.
