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
They said to each other, "Come, let us make oven-fired bricks." They had brick for stone and asphalt for mortar.
and made their lives bitter with difficult labor in brick and mortar, and in all kinds of fieldwork. They ruthlessly imposed all this work on them.
Then they must take different stones to replace the [former] ones and take additional plaster to replaster the house.
It must be torn down with its stones, its beams, and all its plaster, and taken outside the city to an unclean place.
Malchijah son of Rechab, ruler over the district of Beth-haccherem, repaired the Dung Gate. He rebuilt it and installed its doors, bolts, and bars.
"I have raised up one from the north, and he has come, one from the east who invokes My name. He will march over rulers as if they were mud, like a potter who treads the clay.
"Since they have led My people astray saying: Peace, when there is no peace, for when someone builds a wall they plaster it with whitewash, therefore, tell those who plaster [it] that it will fall. Torrential rain will come, and I will send hailstones plunging down, and a windstorm will be released.
I will tear down the wall you plastered with whitewash and knock it to the ground so that its foundation is exposed. The city will fall, and you will be destroyed within it. Then you will know that I am the Lord. After I exhaust My wrath against the wall and against those who plaster it with whitewash, I will say to you: The wall is no more and neither are those who plastered it-
Her prophets plaster with whitewash for them by seeing false visions and lying divinations, and they say: This is what the Lord God says, when the Lord has not spoken.