Rose

Many varieties of the rose proper are indigenous to Syria. The famed rose of Damascus is white, but there are also red and yellow roses. In Cant. 2:1 and Isa. 35:1 the Hebrew word habatstseleth (found only in these passages), rendered "rose" (R.V. marg., "autumn crocus"), is supposed by some to mean the oleander, by others the sweet-scented narcissus (a native of Palestine), the tulip, or the daisy; but nothing definite can be affirmed regarding it. The "rose of Sharon" is probably the cistus or rock-rose, several species of which abound in Palestine. "Mount Carmel especially abounds in the cistus, which in April covers some of the barer parts of the mountain with a glow not inferior to that of the Scottish heather." (See [539]MYRRH [2].)

הבצלת, Cant., ii, 1; Isaiah xxxv, 1. The rose, so much and so often sung by the poets of Persia, Arabia, Greece, and Rome, is, indeed, the pride of the garden for elegance of form, for glow of colour, and fragrance of smell. Tournefort mentions fifty-three kinds, of which the Damascus rose, and the rose of Sharon, are the finest. The beauty of these flowers is too well known to be insisted on; and they are at this day much admired in the east, where they are extremely fragrant. In what esteem the rose was among the Greeks, may be learned from the fifth and fifty-third odes of Anacreon. Among the ancients it occupied a conspicuous place in every chaplet; it was a principal ornament in every festive meeting, and at every solemn sacrifice; and the comparisons in Ecclesiasticus xxiv, 14, and l, 8, show that the Jews were likewise much delighted with it. The rose bud, or opening rose, seems in particular a favourite ornament. The Jewish sensualists, in Wisdom ii, 8, are introduced saying, “Let us fill ourselves with costly wine and ointments; and let no flower of the spring pass by us. Let us crown ourselves with rose buds before they are withered.”