Henna
Plants and Trees in the Bible
Henna is a shrub that reaches 2–3 meters (7–10 feet) in height. It has opposite leaves and many fragrant white flowers. The leaves yield a red juice that people in many countries use for coloring the skin and hair.
Pictures
In the Bible
The Hebrew and Greek words for it, and every verse where each is used
כֹּפֶר kofer · 2 verses
What it stands for
In the bride compares her beloved to the fragrant and beautiful flowers of the henna shrubs growing among or near the vines on the terraces above En Gedi Spring. In the groom likens his beloved to a garden or park where all kinds of fragrant and beautiful plants grow, some of them exotic.
More about it
Henna Lawsonia inermis grew wild in the oases by the Dead Sea in Old Testament times. It is also known as Egyptian privet and is common in the hot, drier parts of Africa, southern Asia, and northern Australia. Although henna was, and is, primarily used because of its coloring properties derived from the dried leaves, in the writer mentions its flowers, which are indeed pretty and fragrant. They are in a “cluster” (’eshkol in Hebrew), which could be taken as a woven object parallel to the little bag of myrrh in verse 13 or as a garland, or simply as a clump of flowers in the cultivated terraces above En Gedi. The reference to henna in is strange since it is in the plural form in Hebrew (kefarim), parallel to the yet stranger Hebrew word neradim (from nerd; see 4.1.9 Spikenard (nard)). Neither of these plants has significant fruit, so the verse can be taken as a glorious concoction of romantic images of spices and flowers.
Also in Trees and plants yielding incense and perfume
Sources
Plants and Trees in the Bible, Animals in the Bible and Human-made Things in the Bible © United Bible Societies, 2025 (adapted from Each According to its Kind: Plants and Trees in the Bible by Robert Koops, All Creatures Great and Small: Living Things in the Bible by Edward R. Hope, and The Works of Their Hands: Man-made Things in the Bible by Ray Pritz), CC BY-SA 4.0; adapted for eRhema