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: Let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly. They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar.
They made their lives bitter with backbreaking work in mortar and bricks and every kind of work in the fields. All the jobs the Egyptians gave them were brutally hard work.
The stones must be replaced, and the house must be plastered again.
It must be torn down, and its stones, its wood, and all its plaster must be carried out of the city to an unclean place.
And Malchijah, the son of Rechab, the ruler of the division of Beth-haccherem, made good the repair of the doorway with their locks and rods.
I have stirred up one from the north, and he comes! One from the rising sun calls on my name. He treads on rulers as if they were mortar, as if he were a potter treading the clay.
It is definitely because they have misled my people by saying, Peace! When there is no peace. And when anyone builds a wall they plaster it over with whitewash.' So tell those who plaster it over with whitewash, that it will fall. A flooding rain will come, and you, O hailstones, will fall; and a violent wind will break out.
I will tear down the wall that the prophets covered up with whitewash. I will level it and expose its foundation. When the wall falls, they will be destroyed by it. Then you will know that I am Jehovah.' I will unleash my rage on the wall and on those who covered it up with paint. Then I will say to you: The wall is gone, and so are those who painted it.
Her prophets have smeared whitewash for them. They see false visions and divine lies for them. They say: This is what the Lord Jehovah says, when Jehovah has not spoken.