the interment of a deceased person; an office held so sacred,
that they who neglected it have in all nations been held in abhorrence.
As soon as the last breath had fled, the nearest relation, or the
dearest friend, gave the lifeless body the parting kiss, the last
farewell and sign of affection to the departed relative. This was a
custom of immemorial antiquity; for the patriarch Jacob had no sooner
yielded up his spirit, than his beloved Joseph, claiming for once the
right of the first-born, “fell upon his face and kissed him.” It is
probable he first closed his eyes, as God had promised he should do:
“Joseph shall put his hands upon thine eyes.” The parting kiss being
given, the company rent their clothes, which was a custom of great
antiquity, and the highest expression of grief in the primitive ages.
This ceremony was never omitted by the Hebrews when any mournful event
happened, and was performed in the following manner: they took a knife,
and holding the blade downward, gave the upper garment a cut in the
right side, and rent it a hand’s breadth. For very near relations, all
the garments are rent on the right side. After closing the eyes, the
next care was to bind up the face, which it was no more lawful to
behold. The next care of surviving friends was to wash the body,
probably, that the ointments and perfumes with which it was to be
wrapped up, might enter more easily into the pores, when opened by warm
water. This ablution, which was always esteemed an act of great charity
and devotion, was performed by women. Thus the body of Dorcas was
washed, and laid in an upper room, till the arrival of the Apostle
Peter, in the hope that his prayers might restore her to life. After the
body was washed, it was shrouded, and swathed with a linen cloth,
although in most places, they only put on a pair of drawers and a white
tunic; and the head was bound about with a napkin. Such were the napkin
and grave clothes in which the Saviour was buried.
2. The body was sometimes embalmed, which was performed by the Egyptians
after the following method: the brain was removed with a bent iron, and
the vacuity filled up with medicaments; the bowels were also drawn out,
and the trunk being stuffed with myrrh, cassia, and other spices, except
frankincense, which were proper to exsiccate the humours, it was pickled
in nitre, in which it lay for seventy days. After this period, it was
wrapped in bandages of fine linen and gums, to make it adhere; and was
then delivered to the relations of the deceased entire; all its
features, and the very hairs of the eyelids, being preserved. In this
manner were the kings of Judah embalmed for many ages. But when the
funeral obsequies were not long delayed, they used another kind of
embalming. They wrapped up the body with sweet spices and odours,
without extracting the brain, or removing the bowels. This is the way in
which it was proposed to embalm the lifeless body of our Saviour; which
was prevented by his resurrection. The meaner sort of people seem to
have been interred in their grave clothes, without a coffin. In this
manner was the sacred body of our Lord committed to the tomb. The body
was sometimes placed upon a bier, which bore some resemblance to a
coffin or bed, in order to be carried out to burial. Upon one of these
was carried forth the widow’s son of Nain, whom our compassionate Lord
raised to life, and restored to his mother. We are informed in the
history of the kings of Judah, that, Asa being dead, they laid him in
the bed, or bier, which was filled with sweet odours. Josephus, the
Jewish historian, describing the funeral of Herod the Great, says, His
bed was adorned with precious stones; his body rested under a purple
covering; he had a diadem and a crown of gold upon his head, a sceptre
in his hand; and all his house followed the bed. The bier used by the
Turks at Aleppo is a kind of coffin, much in the form of ours, only the
lid rises with a ledge in the middle.
3. The Israelites committed the dead to their native dust; and from the
Egyptians, probably, borrowed the practice of burning many spices at
their funerals. “They buried Asa in his own sepulchres, which he made
for himself in the city of David, and laid him in the bed which was
filled with sweet odours, and divers kinds of spices, prepared by the
apothecaries’ art; and they made a very great burning for him,” 2 Chron.
xvi, 14. Thus the Old Testament historian entirely justifies the account
which the Evangelist gives, of the quantity of spices with which the
sacred body of Christ was swathed. The Jews object to the quantity used
on that occasion, as unnecessarily profuse, and even incredible; but it
appears from their own writings, that spices were used at such times in
great abundance. In the Talmud it is said, that no less than eighty
pounds of spices were consumed at the funeral of rabbi Gamaliel the
elder. And at the funeral of Herod, if we may believe the account of
their most celebrated historian, the procession was followed by five
hundred of his domestics carrying spices. Why then should it be reckoned
incredible, that Nicodemus brought of myrrh and aloes about a hundred
pounds’ weight, to embalm the body of Jesus?
4. The funeral procession was attended by professional mourners,
eminently skilled in the art of lamentation, whom the friends and
relations of the deceased hired, to assist them in expressing their
sorrow. They began the ceremony with the stridulous voices of old women,
who strove, by their doleful modulations, to extort grief from those
that were present. The children in the streets through which they
passed, often suspended their sports, to imitate the sounds, and joined
with equal sincerity in the lamentations. “But whereunto shall I liken
this generation? It is like unto children sitting in the markets, and
calling unto their fellows, and saying, We have mourned unto you, and ye
have not lamented,” Matt. ix, 17. Music was afterward introduced to aid
the voices of the mourners: the trumpet was used at the funerals of the
great, and the small pipe or flute for those of meaner condition. Hired
mourners were in use among the Greeks as early as the Trojan war, and
probably in ages long before; for in Homer, a choir of mourners were
planted around the couch on which the body of Hector was laid out, who
sung his funeral dirge with many sighs and tears:--
Ὁι δ’ ἐπεὶ ἐισάγαγον κλυτὰ δώματα, τὸν μὲν ἔπειτα
Τρητοῖς ἐν λεχέεσσι θέσαν, ϖαρὰ δ’ εἷσαν ἀοιδοὺς,
Θρήνων ἐξάρχȣς. κ. τ. λ. _Il._ lib. xxiv, l. 720.
“A melancholy choir attend around,
With plaintive sighs and music’s solemn sound;
Alternately they sing, alternate flow
The obedient tears, melodious in their wo.” POPE.
In Egypt, the lower class of people call in women who play on the tabor;
and whose business it is, like the hired mourners in other countries, to
sing elegiac airs to the sound of that instrument, which they accompany
with the most frightful distortions of their limbs. These women attend
the corpse to the grave, intermixed with the female relations and
friends of the deceased, who commonly have their hair in the utmost
disorder; their heads covered with dust; their faces daubed with indigo,
or at least rubbed with mud; and howling like maniacs. Such were the
minstrels whom our Lord found in the house of Jairus, making so great a
noise round the bed on which the dead body of his daughter lay. The
noise and tumult of these retained mourners, and the other attendants,
appear to have begun immediately after the person expired. It is evident
that this sort of mourning and lamentation was a kind of art among the
Jews: “Wailing shall be in the streets; and they shall call such as are
skilful of lamentation to wail,” Amos v, 16. Mourners are still hired at
the obsequies of Hindoos and Mohammedans, as in former times. To the
dreadful noise and tumult of the hired mourners, the following passage
of Jeremiah indisputably refers; and shows the custom to be derived from
a very remote antiquity: “Call for the mourning women that they may
come; and send for cunning women, that they may come, and let them make
haste, and take up a wailing for us, that our eyes may run down with
tears, and our eyelids gush out with waters,” Jer. ix, 17. The funeral
processions of the Jews in Barbary are conducted nearly in the same
manner as those in Syria. The corpse is borne by four to the place of
burial: in the first rank march the priests, next to them the kindred of
the deceased; after whom come those that are invited to the funeral; and
all singing in a sort of plain song, the forty-ninth Psalm. Hence the
Prophet, Amos viii, 3, warns his people that public calamities were
approaching, so numerous and severe, as should make them forget the
usual rites of burial, and even to sing one of the songs of Zion over
the dust of a departed relative. This appears to be confirmed by a
prediction in the eighth chapter: “And the songs of the temple shall be
howlings in that day, saith the Lord God; there shall be many dead
bodies in every place; they shall cast them forth with _silence_;” they
shall have none to lament and bewail; none to blow the funeral trump or
touch the pipe and tabor; none to sing the plaintive dirge, or express
their hope of a blessed resurrection, in the strains of inspiration. All
shall be silent despair. See SEPULCHRES.
that they who neglected it have in all nations been held in abhorrence.
As soon as the last breath had fled, the nearest relation, or the
dearest friend, gave the lifeless body the parting kiss, the last
farewell and sign of affection to the departed relative. This was a
custom of immemorial antiquity; for the patriarch Jacob had no sooner
yielded up his spirit, than his beloved Joseph, claiming for once the
right of the first-born, “fell upon his face and kissed him.” It is
probable he first closed his eyes, as God had promised he should do:
“Joseph shall put his hands upon thine eyes.” The parting kiss being
given, the company rent their clothes, which was a custom of great
antiquity, and the highest expression of grief in the primitive ages.
This ceremony was never omitted by the Hebrews when any mournful event
happened, and was performed in the following manner: they took a knife,
and holding the blade downward, gave the upper garment a cut in the
right side, and rent it a hand’s breadth. For very near relations, all
the garments are rent on the right side. After closing the eyes, the
next care was to bind up the face, which it was no more lawful to
behold. The next care of surviving friends was to wash the body,
probably, that the ointments and perfumes with which it was to be
wrapped up, might enter more easily into the pores, when opened by warm
water. This ablution, which was always esteemed an act of great charity
and devotion, was performed by women. Thus the body of Dorcas was
washed, and laid in an upper room, till the arrival of the Apostle
Peter, in the hope that his prayers might restore her to life. After the
body was washed, it was shrouded, and swathed with a linen cloth,
although in most places, they only put on a pair of drawers and a white
tunic; and the head was bound about with a napkin. Such were the napkin
and grave clothes in which the Saviour was buried.
2. The body was sometimes embalmed, which was performed by the Egyptians
after the following method: the brain was removed with a bent iron, and
the vacuity filled up with medicaments; the bowels were also drawn out,
and the trunk being stuffed with myrrh, cassia, and other spices, except
frankincense, which were proper to exsiccate the humours, it was pickled
in nitre, in which it lay for seventy days. After this period, it was
wrapped in bandages of fine linen and gums, to make it adhere; and was
then delivered to the relations of the deceased entire; all its
features, and the very hairs of the eyelids, being preserved. In this
manner were the kings of Judah embalmed for many ages. But when the
funeral obsequies were not long delayed, they used another kind of
embalming. They wrapped up the body with sweet spices and odours,
without extracting the brain, or removing the bowels. This is the way in
which it was proposed to embalm the lifeless body of our Saviour; which
was prevented by his resurrection. The meaner sort of people seem to
have been interred in their grave clothes, without a coffin. In this
manner was the sacred body of our Lord committed to the tomb. The body
was sometimes placed upon a bier, which bore some resemblance to a
coffin or bed, in order to be carried out to burial. Upon one of these
was carried forth the widow’s son of Nain, whom our compassionate Lord
raised to life, and restored to his mother. We are informed in the
history of the kings of Judah, that, Asa being dead, they laid him in
the bed, or bier, which was filled with sweet odours. Josephus, the
Jewish historian, describing the funeral of Herod the Great, says, His
bed was adorned with precious stones; his body rested under a purple
covering; he had a diadem and a crown of gold upon his head, a sceptre
in his hand; and all his house followed the bed. The bier used by the
Turks at Aleppo is a kind of coffin, much in the form of ours, only the
lid rises with a ledge in the middle.
3. The Israelites committed the dead to their native dust; and from the
Egyptians, probably, borrowed the practice of burning many spices at
their funerals. “They buried Asa in his own sepulchres, which he made
for himself in the city of David, and laid him in the bed which was
filled with sweet odours, and divers kinds of spices, prepared by the
apothecaries’ art; and they made a very great burning for him,” 2 Chron.
xvi, 14. Thus the Old Testament historian entirely justifies the account
which the Evangelist gives, of the quantity of spices with which the
sacred body of Christ was swathed. The Jews object to the quantity used
on that occasion, as unnecessarily profuse, and even incredible; but it
appears from their own writings, that spices were used at such times in
great abundance. In the Talmud it is said, that no less than eighty
pounds of spices were consumed at the funeral of rabbi Gamaliel the
elder. And at the funeral of Herod, if we may believe the account of
their most celebrated historian, the procession was followed by five
hundred of his domestics carrying spices. Why then should it be reckoned
incredible, that Nicodemus brought of myrrh and aloes about a hundred
pounds’ weight, to embalm the body of Jesus?
4. The funeral procession was attended by professional mourners,
eminently skilled in the art of lamentation, whom the friends and
relations of the deceased hired, to assist them in expressing their
sorrow. They began the ceremony with the stridulous voices of old women,
who strove, by their doleful modulations, to extort grief from those
that were present. The children in the streets through which they
passed, often suspended their sports, to imitate the sounds, and joined
with equal sincerity in the lamentations. “But whereunto shall I liken
this generation? It is like unto children sitting in the markets, and
calling unto their fellows, and saying, We have mourned unto you, and ye
have not lamented,” Matt. ix, 17. Music was afterward introduced to aid
the voices of the mourners: the trumpet was used at the funerals of the
great, and the small pipe or flute for those of meaner condition. Hired
mourners were in use among the Greeks as early as the Trojan war, and
probably in ages long before; for in Homer, a choir of mourners were
planted around the couch on which the body of Hector was laid out, who
sung his funeral dirge with many sighs and tears:--
Ὁι δ’ ἐπεὶ ἐισάγαγον κλυτὰ δώματα, τὸν μὲν ἔπειτα
Τρητοῖς ἐν λεχέεσσι θέσαν, ϖαρὰ δ’ εἷσαν ἀοιδοὺς,
Θρήνων ἐξάρχȣς. κ. τ. λ. _Il._ lib. xxiv, l. 720.
“A melancholy choir attend around,
With plaintive sighs and music’s solemn sound;
Alternately they sing, alternate flow
The obedient tears, melodious in their wo.” POPE.
In Egypt, the lower class of people call in women who play on the tabor;
and whose business it is, like the hired mourners in other countries, to
sing elegiac airs to the sound of that instrument, which they accompany
with the most frightful distortions of their limbs. These women attend
the corpse to the grave, intermixed with the female relations and
friends of the deceased, who commonly have their hair in the utmost
disorder; their heads covered with dust; their faces daubed with indigo,
or at least rubbed with mud; and howling like maniacs. Such were the
minstrels whom our Lord found in the house of Jairus, making so great a
noise round the bed on which the dead body of his daughter lay. The
noise and tumult of these retained mourners, and the other attendants,
appear to have begun immediately after the person expired. It is evident
that this sort of mourning and lamentation was a kind of art among the
Jews: “Wailing shall be in the streets; and they shall call such as are
skilful of lamentation to wail,” Amos v, 16. Mourners are still hired at
the obsequies of Hindoos and Mohammedans, as in former times. To the
dreadful noise and tumult of the hired mourners, the following passage
of Jeremiah indisputably refers; and shows the custom to be derived from
a very remote antiquity: “Call for the mourning women that they may
come; and send for cunning women, that they may come, and let them make
haste, and take up a wailing for us, that our eyes may run down with
tears, and our eyelids gush out with waters,” Jer. ix, 17. The funeral
processions of the Jews in Barbary are conducted nearly in the same
manner as those in Syria. The corpse is borne by four to the place of
burial: in the first rank march the priests, next to them the kindred of
the deceased; after whom come those that are invited to the funeral; and
all singing in a sort of plain song, the forty-ninth Psalm. Hence the
Prophet, Amos viii, 3, warns his people that public calamities were
approaching, so numerous and severe, as should make them forget the
usual rites of burial, and even to sing one of the songs of Zion over
the dust of a departed relative. This appears to be confirmed by a
prediction in the eighth chapter: “And the songs of the temple shall be
howlings in that day, saith the Lord God; there shall be many dead
bodies in every place; they shall cast them forth with _silence_;” they
shall have none to lament and bewail; none to blow the funeral trump or
touch the pipe and tabor; none to sing the plaintive dirge, or express
their hope of a blessed resurrection, in the strains of inspiration. All
shall be silent despair. See SEPULCHRES.