nature
rose
שושנה · חבצלת · ורד · נרקיס
Bottom line
None of the three can be pinned to a modern species with confidence, and a translator should know that before choosing a word. Shoshanah is the Biblical flower, best rendered rose in a Torah context (Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur: it grows among thorns, and lilies do not), though Modern Hebrew has reassigned it to the lily. Chavatzeles is either the same flower at a different stage or in a different place, or a daffodil; Shulchan Aruch rules it a narkis. Vered is post-Biblical rose, and the Targumim use it to render shoshanah. The trap: one English "rose" flattens all three, and Shir HaShirim 2:1 sets chavatzeles and shoshanah side by side in a single pasuk.
At a glance
| Hebrew | translit | English | what sets it apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| שושנה | shoshanah | rose | the Biblical word, red by association (Shir HaShirim 5:13); petal count disputed |
| חבצלת | chavatzeles | young rose / daffodil | the same flower young (Shir HaShirim Rabbah 2:3) or sun-parched (Vilna Gaon), or a narkis (Targum) |
| ורד | vered | rose | Mishnaic and Aramaic; renders shoshanah in the Targumim; broader term (Rabbi Yirmiyahu Low) |
| נרקיס | narkis | daffodil | the identification the Shulchan Aruch gives for chavatzeles (Orach Chaim 216:9) |
Where the authorities disagree
How many petals a shoshanah has, and therefore what it is. Ibn Ezra (to Shir HaShirim 2:1) cites a tradition explaining the doubled shin as shesh, six, so the flower has six petals; Radak (Sefer HaShorashim) says the same, and Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim traces the word to the biliteral ש-ש on that basis. Six petals would rule out a rose, since roses typically have five petals or multiples of five. The Zohar cuts across this: at Hakdamah 1a a shoshanah is ringed by thirteen petals, like Knesses Yisrael ringed by the thirteen middos of rachamim, and on the same page it has five "strong" petals, which is why the five fingers should encircle the kos shel berachah. Elsewhere (Vayechi 221a, Emor 105a) the Zohar says six. Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur (Sefer Tishbi) records the white-six-petal-lily reading and rejects it: Shir HaShirim has the shoshanah growing among thorns (2:2), and lilies do not. The Bottom line follows him.
Whether chavatzeles and shoshanah are one flower. Four positions.
- The same. Rashi (to Shir HaShirim 2:1): chavatzeles means shoshanah. Radak (Sefer HaShorashim) defines chavatzeles outright as rosa, a rose, and explicitly links it to vered. Rabbi Shlomo of Urbino (Ohel Moed) and Rabbi Shlomo Aharon Wertheimer (Beiurei Shemos HaNirdafim) treat them as synonyms. The column adds that the same understanding seems evident from the old translations, which do not distinguish the two words: the Peshitta, the early Syriac rendering, has shoshnat for both, the Septuagint has the Greek krinon for both, and the Vulgate has the Latin lilium, lily, for both. Some texts of Rashi read "a type of shoshanah," which makes chavatzeles a species under the genus rather than an equal.
- The same flower at two ages. Shir HaShirim Rabbah 2:3: chavatzeles is the flower young, shoshanah grown. Rabbi Wertheimer builds on this and takes the final tav as a diminutive, a young rose whose bud has not opened. (Whether that tav is part of the root was already disputed: Ibn Janach and Radak treat it as radical, Menachem Ibn Saruk as integral.) The Zohar (Vayechi 221a, Emor 105a) matches: chavatzeles is the young green plant, shoshanah the mature red and white one. Rabbi Daniel Frisch (Masok MiDvash) reads those colors kabbalistically rather than botanically, green as unmitigated din and red-and-white as din blended with rachamim.
- The same flower in two places. The Vilna Gaon (Beiur HaGra to Shir HaShirim 2:1): grown on the open Sharon plain in full sun the flower dries and yellows, and is called chavatzeles; grown in a valley it keeps its moisture and its natural whitish-reddish-pink, and is called shoshanah. Peirush Chachmei Tzarfas fixes the colors differently: chavatzeles white, shoshanah red. (The column remarks that for some odd reason all of this puts him in mind of the War of the Roses in England.)
- A different flower, the narkis. Targum (to Shir HaShirim 2:1), Ibn Janach in the name of Rav Yehudai Gaon, Rabbi Saadia Gaon's Tafsir, Kaftor VaFerach ch. 56 in the name of Rav Hai Gaon, Rabbi Shemaryah ben Elchanan of Cairo, and Ibn Ezra. Narkis is a Hebraicization of the Arabic narjis, which comes in turn from the Latin narcissus, itself from the Greek narkissos, and it is the flower English calls the daffodil. Shulchan Aruch (Orach Chaim 216:9) codifies chavatzeles as narkis and then cites the alternative, lirio, Spanish for lily, which is Rabbeinu Yonah's view (Berachos 31b in the Alfasi pagination). Rashi (to Berachos 43b) ties the Gemara's narkom, read narkis in Sefer HeAruch and others, back to the Biblical chavatzeles. The column notes the Greek myth the Latin name carries: Narcissus, a young man of extraordinary beauty and self-absorbed selfishness, caught sight of his own reflection, fell in love with it, and wasted away by the pool, and the narcissus flower bloomed where he died; for a similar tale in rabbinic literature it points to Nedarim 9b. (It also notes that the Windows Hebrew font Narkisim seems to be named for the flower.)
Whether shoshanah and vered are the same. Rambam (Hilchos Berachos 9:6) lists shoshanah, narkis (chavatzeles), and vered separately, which led Rabbi Yosef Karo (Kesef Mishneh) to ask: if vered and shoshanah are not one, what is a shoshanah? Rabbi Massoud Chai Rokach (Maaseh Rokeach) answers that Rabbi Karo knew both are roses and one is red and the other white, and only wanted to know which is which (see Rambam to Mishnah Sheviis 7:6). Rabbi Yirmiyahu Low (Divrei Yirmiyahu) answers differently: vered is a general term that can take in various flowers and shoshanah the more specific term, the rose as a kind of vered, which is borne out by Vayikra Rabbah 23:3, "shoshanah achas shel vered." The column offers a third possibility of its own, that vered is the whole plant and shoshanah specifically the flower. The Zohar (Ki Sisa 189b) appears to equate them outright, and the Targumim render shoshanah as vered. Ibn Ezra (to Shir HaShirim 2:1) cites some commentators who explain chavatzeles as vered and others who explain shoshanah as vered; taken together, the column suggests, this might echo the view that chavatzeles and shoshanah are one and the same.
Distinctions
shoshanah (שושנה)
Twelve occurrences as a plant, eight of them in Shir HaShirim (for instance 6:2, gathering shoshanim). It appears in the Mishnah too (Kilayim 5:8, Taharos 3:7), and shoshanim names a musical instrument in three Tehillim headings (45:1, 69:1, 80:1), whose shape somehow resembles the flower. There is reason to think the flower reddish, on two counts: the lover's lips, presumably red, are compared to shoshanim (Shir HaShirim 5:13, and see 4:3), and Vayikra Rabbah 19:6 praises Yechonyah for separating from his wife when she saw a stain like a shoshanah adumah. Shoshanah has been a Jewish woman's name since the Second Temple period, on the strength of the story of a woman named Shoshanah appended to the Septuagint's Daniel, and the English Sue, Susan and Suzanna all derive from it. Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh of Carpentras (Aholei Yehudah) connects shoshanah to sasson, gladness, on the interchange of sin and shin: a beautiful, fragrant flower gladdens whoever meets it.
chavatzeles (חבצלת)
Twice in Tanach: "the chavatzeles of the Sharon, the shoshanah of the valleys" (Shir HaShirim 2:1), and Yeshayahu's desolate place that "blossoms like a chavatzeles" (35:1). The commentators to the Midrash, Matnos Kehunah, Eitz Yosef, and Maharzu, and also Peirush HaRokeach, parse it as ח-ב (hidden) plus tzel (shadow): the young flower's beauty is still hidden in its own shade. Shir HaShirim Rabbah 2:1 reads it as chaviv (dear) plus tzel, and develops several ways in which comparing Israel to the chavatzeles is praise. Rabbi Moshe Tedeschi-Ashkenazi (Ho'il Moshe) sees the string batzel, an onion, inside the five-letter word, so a flower that grows from an onion; he then adds a comment in Italian that a chavatzeles is a lily or a hyacinth. Rabbi Ernest Klein surmises that chavatzeles is somehow related to the Akkadian habasillatu, stalk.
vered (ורד)
Not in Tanach; Mishnaic (Sheviis 7:6-7, Maasros 2:5, Shabbos 14:4) and the Targumic rendering of shoshanah. Modern Hebrew's varod, pink, comes from it. Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur derives the Mishnaic vradin, the veins inside an animal's neck (Chullin 2:1), from vered as something likewise red; Rabbi Yaakov Emden (Ezer Ohr to Sefer Tishbi) finds that connection too far-fetched. Rabbi Ernest Klein traces vered itself to the Aramaic varda, vardina in some dialects, which he takes as a loanword from the Old Iranian wrda; he explains that word as the etymon of the Greek rodon and the Latin rosa, so that the English "rose," which comes from the Latin, is etymologically related to vered.
Rendering guidance
- Trap: writing "rose" for all three destroys Shir HaShirim 2:1, where chavatzeles and shoshanah stand in parallel halves of one pasuk. Render them differently ("the rose of the Sharon, the lily of the valleys" is the familiar English, but it commits you), or keep one transliterated with a gloss.
- In a halachic context on berachos, follow Shulchan Aruch: chavatzeles is the narkis. Elsewhere, follow the mefaresh the passage is quoting.
- Do not import Modern Hebrew, where shoshanah is a lily and vered a rose. In Chazal and in Tanach the assignment is not settled, and Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur rejects the lily for shoshanah on the strength of the thorns.
- Where a source is counting petals (the Zohar's thirteen, the Zohar's five, the six of Ibn Ezra's tradition), keep the number and do not name a species; the number is the point and the species is the inference.
- Shoshanah as a personal name stays Shoshanah, roman and untranslated.
Sources
Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Emor: Rose by Another Name," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 10 Iyar 5784 (2024-05-18): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/11391-emor-rose-by-another-name.md. Primary loci: Shir HaShirim 2:1, 2:2, 4:3, 5:13, 6:2; Yeshayahu 35:1; Tehillim 45:1, 69:1, 80:1; Mishnah Kilayim 5:8, Taharos 3:7, Sheviis 7:6-7, Maasros 2:5, Shabbos 14:4, Chullin 2:1; Berachos 43b; Nedarim 9b; Shir HaShirim Rabbah 2:1 and 2:3; Vayikra Rabbah 19:6 and 23:3; Zohar Hakdamah 1a, Vayechi 221a, Emor 105a, Ki Sisa 189b; Beiur HaGra to Shir HaShirim 2:1; Sefer HaShorashim of Ibn Janach and of Radak; Machberes Menachem; Sefer Tishbi with Ezer Ohr; Kaftor VaFerach ch. 56; Rambam, Hilchos Berachos 9:6 and his commentary to Mishnah Sheviis 7:6, with Kesef Mishneh and Maaseh Rokeach; Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim 216:9; Rabbeinu Yonah, Berachos 31b in the Rif; Ohel Moed; Beiurei Shemos HaNirdafim; Aholei Yehudah; Ho'il Moshe; Masok MiDvash.
The essay is dedicated to the memory of the author's grandmother Rose (Roszi) Klein, born in Bonyhad in 1928, who survived the Holocaust, settled in Brooklyn, and was known as Shoshanah after her English name. The Peshitta, Septuagint and Vulgate renderings, the Greek myth behind narcissus, Rabbi Ernest Klein's Akkadian habasillatu and Old Iranian wrda, and the pointer to Prof. Zohar Amar's Tzimchei HaMikra for further botanical identifications were formerly omitted here under an Orthodox-sources rule that does not belong to this guide; all are restored, attributed as the column attributes them.
One wording is reproduced from the article as printed rather than resolved: on the final tav of chavatzeles, the article says Ibn Janach and Radak understand it as "radical to the core root" while Menachem Ibn Saruk "sees it as integral," a contrast it does not spell out.