Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

Introduction

rose--if applied to Jesus Christ, it, with the white lily (lowly, Co2 8:9), answers to "white and ruddy" (Sol 5:10). But it is rather the meadow-saffron: the Hebrew means radically a plant with a pungent bulb, inapplicable to the rose. So Syriac. It is of a white and violet color [MAURER, GESENIUS, and WEISS]. The bride thus speaks of herself as lowly though lovely, in contrast with the lordly "apple" or citron tree, the bridegroom (Sol 2:3); so the "lily" is applied to her (Sol 2:2), Sharon-- (Isa 35:1-2). In North Palestine, between Mount Tabor and Lake Tiberias (Ch1 5:16). Septuagint and Vulgate translate it, "a plain"; though they err in this, the Hebrew Bible not elsewhere favoring it, yet the parallelism to valleys shows that, in the proper name Sharon, there is here a tacit reference to its meaning of lowliness. Beauty, delicacy, and lowliness, are to be in her, as they were in Him (Mat 11:29).