OIL-PRESS (oil-pre's).
"The oil of Palestine is expressed in a rude way. The olive is subjected to pressure in a mill consisting of a great millstone with a hole in its center; this stone is laid on one of its flat surfaces, and a beam of wood fastened upright in the axis. The upper surface of the stone is slightly depressed, except at its margin and around the central hole. Another millstone is set up on its edge in the depression of the upper surface of the lower stone. Through the axis of this stone passes a long beam, which is fastened at one end by a pin to the axis of the horizontal stone, and at the other to a whiffletree, to which a horse or ox is geared when the mill is in operation. The upright stone is moved around the axis of the lower, and crushes the olives by its great weight. The oil which is expressed by this crush ing mill is incorporated with the crushed mass, which is then transferred to baskets of flexible structure, eighteen inches wide and six inches deep. A pile of these baskets, eight feet or more in height, is raised within a hollow erect cylinder of stone, which is open in front by a slit, four inches in width, from top to bottom of the cylin der. Into the top of this cylinder passes a piston, which is connected with a lever, to which are attached heavy stones, and by means of the piston the baskets of olives are subjected to as much pressure as is necessary to extract the oil. The quality of oil thus made is quite inferior to that imported from Italy and France. It is largely used in making soap, and was formerly much more used for burning than now." (Dr. Post. of Beirut. in Schaff's Bib. Dia.) (See OuvE.) possibly tree of oil (Is. xli:io).
In Kings vi :23, 31, 32, 33 these words are rendered "olive tree," and represent the material of the cherubim, doors, and posts of Solomon's temple. They are translated "pine" in Neh. viii • 15. But the olive tree is also unmistakably men tioned in this verse. If the oil tree •.vas not the olive tree, what was it? Tristram and others believe it to be the oleaster (Eleagnus angusti folizts). This shrub has no affinity to the olive,
though resembling it in leaf and general ap pearance and yielding from its berries an inferior oil. It is found plentifully on the highlands of Palestine and about Jerusalem, thus meeting the direction of Neh. viii :15, as the Balanites z-E07) tiaca, a shrub of the Jordan valley, does not. Dr. Tristram therefore suggests in one place (un der "Oil Tree") that its "fine hard wood" was the wood of the cherubim, but in another place (under "Olive") states that material to have been olive wood (as the A. V. reads). The latter opinion has a strona probability in its favor, and it does not appear that the oleaster is more than a large shrub, though the author cited calls it, as compared with the olive, "a smaller tree." For the passage in Nehemiah there would then be no present explanation unless we believe, as is very possible, that the term "oil tree," in later times at least, was extended or restricted to the oleaster.
G. E. Post, Hastings' Bib. Dict., says : "The only trees which fulfill all the necessary con ditions are the fatwood trees. The genus Pinus furnishes three species, Pinus Pinea, L. the stone or znaritinze pine, Pinus the A/eppo pine, and Pinus Bruttia, Ten., which is perhaps only a variety of the last. Any of these would furnish foliage suitable for booths, and all are constantly used for this purpose in the East. Their massive trunks could easily furnish thc log required for the carved image, and the doors and doorposts. They are constantly used in house carpentry. Their heartwood is fat enough to en title them to be called 'trees of fatness.' They are spontaneous, growing in the wilderness (i. e. uncultivated places, and so fit to be associated with the other trees mentioned with them, Is. xli :19). We are inclined with Celsius (Hierob.
3o9) to translate 'ez-shemen, 'fatwood trees,' and to suppose that the reference is to the pines."