cypress: a tall evergreen conifer of Lebanon, prized with the cedar for its fragrant, durable timber.
Wherever this tree appears, the cedar (אֶרֶז) is usually standing right beside it. The two are Israel's great timber trees, both cut from the mountains of Lebanon, both floated south to build the temple and the palace, and both used together as a picture of everything tall, green, and glorious. The cedar is the more famous and the larger; the cypress is its constant, slightly lesser companion.
The word covers both the living tree and the wood it gives. In the building stories of Kings and Chronicles it is lumber: floorboards and doors in Solomon's temple, planking for ships, the frame for musical instruments. In the poetry of the prophets it is the standing tree: a home for storks, a sign of the desert turning green, a green tree that God compares himself to, a forest that mourns when the cedar falls.
The one thing scholars cannot pin down is exactly which tree it was. English Bibles have called it a "cypress," a "fir," a "juniper," and a "pine," because the ancient name does not match any single modern species with certainty. What is clear is the kind of tree: a tall, fragrant, evergreen conifer whose wood was valued for building.