teil tree

an old name for the lime-tree, the tilia, Isaiah 6:13, the terebinth, or turpentine-tree, the Pistacia terebinthus of botanists

The Hebrew word here used (elah) is rendered oak in Genesis 35:4; Judges 6:11, 19; Isaiah 1:29, etc. In Isaiah 61:3 it is rendered in the plural “trees;” Hos. 4:13, “elm” (Revised King James Version, “terebinth”). In 1 Samuel 17:2, 19 it is taken as a proper name, “Elah” (Revised King James Version marginal note, “terebinth”).

“The terebinth of Mamre, or its lineal successor, remained from the days of Abraham till the fourth century of the Christian era, and on its site Constantine erected a Christian church, the ruins of which still remain.”

This tree “is seldom seen in clumps or groves, never in forests, but stands isolated and weird-like in some bare ravine or on a hill-side where nothing else towers above the low brushwood” (Henry Baker Tristram, The Natural History of the Bible).