Exod. 25:10, 13, 23; 26:15, 26, 32, 37; 27:1; 30:1), which probably is the only tree of the limited varieties in Sinai that could have been used to make furniture. The nineteenth-century explorer Henry Spencer Palmer, who wrote extensively about the geography and flora and fauna of Sinai, observed, “Of the native trees there are very few varieties. The most valuable for economic purposes are the date-palm, the acacia and the tamarisk.”175 The Hebrew word for “acacia,” šiṭṭâ or šiṭṭîm (pl.), appears