Exegesis:

katanoēsate ta krina pōs auxanei ‘consider the lilies how they grow,’ i.e. ‘consider how the lilies grow.’ ta krina is emphatic by position. For auxanō cf. on 1.80.

krinon ‘lily.’

ou kopia oude nēthei ‘they do not toil or spin,’ referring to human efforts towards the sustaining of life in an agricultural setting. kopiaō (cf. on 5.5) refers to the (hard) work on the land (usually done by men), and nēthō ‘to spin’ to domestic work (usually done by women).

legō de humin ‘but I tell you,’ cf. on 3.8.

oude Solomōn en pasē tē doxē autou ‘not even Solomon in all his splendour.’ doxa refers here to the magnificence which surrounds a king in every respect.

periebaleto hōs hen toutōn ‘was dressed like one of them.’ The aorist tense does not refer here to an event, but to a situation of the past.

periballō (also 23.11) ‘to put on,’ in middle form ‘to dress (oneself).’

Translation:

Lilies, or, the name of some brightly coloured flower, especially the purple, or scarlet, wild anemone; or more generically, ‘(wild) flowers’ (Batak Toba, Huixtec, Central Mazahua), ‘blooms.’

How they grow refers here to the result of their growth, i.e. their outward appearance, rather than to the process of growing; it has, therefore, sometimes been omitted, i.e. left to be understood from the context, e.g. in Shona 1966.

To spin, or, ‘to spin thread,’ or some term referring to an equivalent feminine activity, e.g. ‘to weave cloth(es)’ (Tzeltal, similarly in Shona 1963; and in one West Nyanja version, lit. ‘to beat cloth,’ i.e. to beat the threads into position in the loom), or a term for rolling fibres to make thread (Shona 1966), twisting bark threads on the thigh to make strings (Ekari, similarly another West Nyanja version), beating out bark-cloth (Kele); or more generically, “make clothes for themselves” (Good News Translation).

Even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. The sentence structure often has to be recast, e.g. ‘not even S., as glorious (or, rich) as he was, had clothes as beautiful as one of these flowers’ (cf. Good News Translation), or, if a term for ‘array,’ ‘clothing’ cannot be applied to flowers, ‘although the clothes of S. were very beautiful, their beauty did not equal the beauty of one flower’ (Tzeltal). Glory, here referring to a human being’s outward appearance, may be rendered, ‘pomp,’ ‘splendour,’ ‘magnificence,’ ‘beauty,’ ‘greatness of life’ (Tae’ 1933); such a rendering will often differ from the one used for ‘(heavenly or divine) glory’ in 2.9. Arrayed, or, ‘attired,’ especially said of princely dress, or simply, ‘clothed.’

Quoted with permission from Reiling, J. and Swellengrebel, J.L. A Handbook on the Gospel of Luke. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1971. For this and other handbooks for translators see here . Make sure to also consult the Handbook on the Gospel of Mark for parallel or similar verses.