ACACIA. - A tree of the mimosa family, mimosa nilotica of Linnaeus or acacia arabica; it is the spina aegyptiaca of the ancients. Very widespread in Egypt and in the Sinai peninsula, it is rare in Palestine, where it is found only near the Jordan. It yields gum arabic. Its wood (used by the Egyptians for the construction of sacred ships) is very hard, very light and almost incorruptible. Yellowish in color, with time it becomes black like ebony.

In Hebrew the name is used in the plural šīṭṭim (šīṭṭāh only in Is. 41, 19); from the Egyptian šudt, later sonte, probably "thorn". The ancient translators ignored its precise meaning: the Septuagint has ξῶλον ἄσσητον "incorruptible wood"; the Vulgate, ligna setim.

Of acacia were made the boards and the columns of the Tabernacle, the Ark (v.) of the Covenant, the altars, the table of the loaves of proposition and the poles for carrying these sacred objects (Ex. 25-38; Deut. 10). The fact that Moses uses for the furnishings of worship not the noble cedar, but the only suitable wood he had in the desert of Sinai and which was almost unknown in Palestine, confirms the historicity of the sacred books of the Pentateuch, and excludes that the Tabernacle is an idealization of Solomon's temple.

Bibliography2 works

BIBL.: Th. Hasseus, De ligno Sittim, in R. Ugolini, Thesaurus Antiquitatum Sacrarum, VIII, Venice 1747, coll. 351-68; E. Naville, The shittim wood, in Proceedings of the Soc. of bibl. Archaeology, 34 (1912), pp. 180-90.

Francesco Spadafora

@incollection{ec1_acacia, author = {Spadafora, Francesco}, title = {Acacia}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {I}, pages = {156}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1948}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/acacia} }

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