Bible Flowers and Flower Lore (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: II. THE ROSE OF SHARON. all Bible flowers the most familiar, the most often referred to, and, generally speaking, the first to occur to the mind of the general reader, is undoubtedly the Rose, the Rose of Sharon. It is also the flower of which we know least. For, of the scores of plants mentioned in the Scriptures there is, in all probability, not a single one of which the identity is more doubtful. The Hebrew word which is translated Rose is " chabatzeleth." It is found only twice in the Sacred Writings, in the Song of Solomon (ii. i), " I am the Rose of Sharon," and in Isaiah (xxxv. i), "The desert shall rejoice and blossom as the Rose." Philologists can give us no clue to the real signification of the word. Professor Delitzsch has found "chavatzilatu" in the Assyrian; but he could only guess at its meaning, pretty much as the learned Gesenius did, when he says it is a reed plant of some kind or other. All we can for certain assert is that it was a bulbous-rooted, wild-growing, and highly-scented flower. We must not be led away by the Talmudic " varad," which is only a Chaldee rendering of the Hebrew. Naturalists and commentators have alike tried, in vain most of them, to identify the pseudo-Rose of Sharon. Dr. Thomson suggests the commonplace, not to say vulgar, mallow. Robinson proposes the little parvenu known as the meadow-saffron or meadow-crocus. But neither can claim, with anything like good grounds, the poetic honours that attach to Solomon's flower. The only claimant whose pretensions will, for a moment, bear examination?and the only claimant whose pretensions we can favour?is the sweet- scented Narcissus, a lovely flowering-plant, more odorous than even that charming English favourite, the Lily of the Valley, and gorgeous of hue as only the field gems of th...