hnvwv of the Canticle(*) One of the many sayings of Jesus which will be familiar to anyone who has read the Gospels is: “And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these”. (Mt 6,28-29; cf. Lk 12,27-28). Generally these flowers ta; krivna tou' ajgrou are understood as “the lilies of the field”, and the references to these “lilies” appear only twice in the NT, whereas in the LXX this same lexeme krivnon occurs more often. The dominant use is noticed in the Song of Songs where it renders the original hnvwv. The aim of this paper is to revisit the lexeme hnvwv and its meaning, primarily in the Hebrew text of the eight chapters-long Canticle which is ascribed to Solomon (1,1). After a short presentation of how the LXX manages to translate the occurrences of hnvwv (part I), attention will be paid primarily to the term itself. The etymology is still not unanimously accepted (part II). Searching for its meaning, we examine the three somewhat different uses of this term, focussing mainly on its occurrences in the Song where it features prominently (part III). This may be regarded as a test case itself for the meaning of hnvwv (1). (*) I am grateful to Prof. Alviero Niccacci for careful reading of the first draft of this essay. His and Prof. Othmar Keel’s remarks helped me to strengthen some of the weak points. (1) BDB, 1004, defines this noun as “usually lily, probably any kind of lily- like flower”; KBL3 IV, 1454-1455: “lily”, “the flower of the lily” or “lotus blossom”. E.D. Klein translates only with “lily”. Klein reports that some scholars identify the word with the Egyptian lotus sππn, sπn (Coptic πôπˇn), the others to Ranunculus asiaticus, still others to Cyperus papyrus. According to others the word goes back to Akkadian πuπu (six-sided); A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language for Readers of English (Jerusalem 1987) 647. The Greek souson and Latin Susanna are therefore, according Klein, the Semitic loan words. P. REYMOND, Dictionnaire d’hébreu et d’araméen bibliques (Paris 1991) 380: “lys”, “lotus” (in the Temple architecture), and an unknown musical instrument (in the Psalms); L. ALONSO SCHÖKEL, Diccionario bíblico hebreo-español (Madrid 1994) 755: “azucena, lirio”.