Reference: Mortar (2)
Smith
Mortar.
Ge 11:3; Ex 1:14; Le 14:42,45; Isa 41:25; Eze 13:10-11,14-15; 22:28; Ne 3:14
The various compacting substances used in Oriental buildings appear to be --
1. Bitumen, as in the Babylonian structures;
2. Common mud or moistened clay;
3. A very firm cement compounded of sand, ashes and lime, in the proportions respectively of 1,2,3, well pounded, sometimes mixed and sometimes coated with oil, so as to form a surface almost impenetrable to wet or the weather. In Assyrian and also Egyptian brick buildings, stubble or straw, as hair or wool among ourselves, was added to increase the tenacity.
See Verses Found in Dictionary
And they said one to another, Come, let us make bricks, burning them well. And they had bricks for stone, putting them together with sticky earth.
And made their lives bitter with hard work, making building-material and bricks, and doing all sorts of work in the fields under the hardest conditions.
And they will take other stones and put them in place of those stones, and he will take other paste and put it on the walls of the house.
And the house will have to be pulled down, the stones of it and the wood and the paste; and everything is to be taken out to an unclean place outside the town.
And Malchijah, the son of Rechab, the ruler of the division of Beth-haccherem, made good the doorway of the waste, building it up and putting up its doors, with their locks and rods.
I have sent for one from the north, and from the dawn he has come; in my name he will get rulers together and go against them; they will be like dust, even as the wet earth is stamped on by the feet of the potter.
Because, even because they have been guiding my people into error, saying, Peace; when there is no peace; and in the building of a division wall they put whitewash on it: Say to those who put whitewash on it, There will be an overflowing shower; and you, O ice-drops, will come raining down; and it will be broken in two by the storm-wind.
So I will let the wall, which you were covering with whitewash, be broken down; I will have it levelled to the earth so that its base is uncovered: it will come down, and destruction will come on you with it; and it will be clear to you that I am the Lord. So I will let loose my passion on the wall in full measure, and on those who put whitewash on it; and I will say to you, Where is the wall, and where are those who put whitewash on it?
And her prophets have been using whitewash, seeing foolish visions and making false use of secret arts, saying, This is what the Lord has said, when the Lord has said nothing.