The wringing of the hands above the head was a mark of extreme grief. Jer. ii. 37. Geier, 290.
[Page 264.]—Burning was reckoned dishonourable.] “Corpora condere, quam cremare, e more Egyptio.” Tac. Hist. v. 5. They differed, however, in this from the Egyptians, that they only wrapt the body in spices, and did not fill the cavities with them. The burnings mentioned in Scripture, in connection with royal funerals, appear to have been burnings of spices, (2 Chron. xvi. 14.) in other cases a mark of a great mortality, as (Amos vi. 10.) requiring a more expeditious kind of sepulture. Josephus (cont. Apion. ii. 26.) is referred to as mentioning the custom of all who met a funeral joining in the lamentation; Πᾶσι δὲ τοῖς παριοῦσι θαπτομένου τινὸς καὶ συνελθεῖν καὶ συναποδύρασθαι ἐπόησε νόμιμον. The common reading, however, is περιοῦσι, “survivors of the family,” which suits the connection better. Of the Hebrew sepulchres a large account is given in Nicolaus de Sepulchris Hebræorum, Lugd. Bat. 1606. The custom of throwing a sod is introduced from the practice of the modern Jews. Buxtorf Synagoga, c. 35. p. 502. The annual whitening of the sepulchres was, according to the Rabbins, a charge of the magistracy, and performed in the month Adar, (Nicolaus, p. 237) i. e. a short time before the Passover; a circumstance of which Harmer (iii. 449.) does not appear to have been aware. It is remarkable that the Mahometans whiten their sepulchres before their great solemnity of Ramadan.
[Page 265.]—The bread of mourning and the cup of consolation.] This custom is alluded to in Ezek. xxiv. 17. Jer. xvi. 5. 7. 8. “Neither shall men break bread among them on account of a mourner, to comfort him over a deceased friend; nor shall men make them drink of the cup of consolation because of one’s father, or because of one’s mother.” Blayney’s Translation, and the margin of the common Bible. “The origin of this custom undoubtedly was, that the friends of the mourner who came to comfort him; (and that they often came in great numbers we may learn from John xi. 19.) easily concluding that a person so far swallowed up of grief as even to forget his bread could hardly attend to the entertainment of so many guests, each sent in his proportion of meat and drink, in hopes to prevail on the mourner, by their example and persuasion, to partake of such refreshment as might tend to recruit both his bodily strength and his spirits.” Blayney. Geier de luct. Heb. p. 166.
[Page 265.]—The mourning lasted seven days.] The shortest term of mourning appears to have been seven days; (Gen. 1. 10. Jos. Ant. xvii. 8.) many extended it to thirty. Num. xxxiv. 8. Bell. Jud. iii. 8. “At Aleppo,” says Russell, “the near relations visit the sepulchre on the third, the seventh, and the fortieth day after the interment. The women likewise visit the graves on their ordinary garden days. They set out early in the morning, attended by a small train of females, carrying flowers and aromatic herbs to bestrew the tomb. The moment they arrive at the place, they give loose afresh to their sorrow in loud screams interrupted at intervals by the chief mourner, who, in a lower tone of voice, recalls the endearing circumstances of past times, or, in a tender apostrophe to the deceased, appeals to the pains she incessantly employed to render his life happy: she describes the forlorn condition of his family now he is gone, and mingles fond reproach with professions of unalterable affection.” ii. 311.
[269.]—The palms.] See the account of the various uses of this tree (the natives reckon up 360) in Mariti’s Travels, ii. p. 348. Harris’s Nat. Hist. of the Bible. “A considerable part of the inhabitants of Egypt, Arabia, and Persia subsist almost entirely upon its fruit; they boast also of its medicinal virtues. Their camels feed upon the date-stone; and from the leaves they make couches, baskets, bags, mats, and brushes; from the branches, cages for their poultry, and fences for their gardens; from the fibres of the boughs, thread, ropes, and rigging; from the sap is prepared a spirituous liquor, and the body of the tree furnishes fuel.” Clarke, v. 409. Notwithstanding their being wholly destitute of lateral branches, and of great height, they are climbed with ease by the prominences of the bark, which form a kind of natural ladder. “The terebinth,” says Mariti, (iii. 29.) “has leaves of a figure much like that of the olive. The flowers are like those of the vine, and grow in bunches; they are of a purple colour, and produce no fruit. The fruit grows among the branches; they are of the size of juniper berries, hang in clusters, and contain each a small seed, of the size of a grape-stone: they are of a ruddy purple colour and are remarkably juicy.” The pistachio, is the בטן of the Hebrews, (Gen. xliii. 11.) still called bouttoum in the Holy Land. (Burckhardt, 346.) Harris’s N. H. of the Bible, Art. Nut. It was found, if not exclusively, at least in the highest perfection, in Syria and Palestine; (Bochart, Geogr. Sacr. lib. i. c. 10. Op. iii. 387.) and is reckoned by Jacob (Gen. xliii. 11.) among the choice fruits of the land which his sons were to carry down as a present into Egypt.
[Page 269.]—The balsam was scraped from the tree.] “Balsamum, modica arbor: ut quisque ramus intumuit si vim ferri adhibeas, pavent venæ: fragmine lapidis aut testa aperiuntur.” Tac. Hist. v. 6. This was the most precious kind of the balsam, called opobalsamum; that expressed from the seeds, carpobalsamum; that obtained by crushing and boiling down the shoots, xylobalsamum.
[Page 275.]—The simoom.] Dr. Clarke (iv. 252.) says of the simoom, as experienced by him in Palestine, “Its parching influence pervaded all places alike, and coming as from a furnace, it seemed to threaten us all with suffocation. The author was the first who sustained serious injury from the fiery blast, being attacked by giddiness accompanied with burning thirst, headach, and frequent fits of shivering ensued, and these ended in violent fever.” Notwithstanding the respectable authorities for its deadly effects in the desert, the accurate Burckhardt (Travels in Nubia, p. 189) says, “I inquired, as I had often done before, whether my companions had often experienced the Semoum, which we translate by the poisonous blast of the desert, but which is nothing more than a violent south-east wind. They answered in the affirmative; but none had ever known an instance of its having proved fatal. I have been repeatedly exposed to the hot wind in the Syrian and Arabian deserts, in Upper Egypt and Nubia. The hottest and most violent I ever experienced was at Suakin, yet even there I felt no particular inconvenience from it, although exposed to all its fury in the open plain. For my own part I am perfectly convinced that all the stories which travellers, or the inhabitants of the towns of Egypt and Syria, relate of the Semoum are greatly exaggerated, and I never could hear of a single well-authenticated instance of its having proved mortal either to man or beast. I never observed that the Semoum blows close to the ground, as commonly supposed, but always observed the whole atmosphere appear as if in a state of combustion: the dust and sand are carried high into the air, which assumes a reddish, or bluish, or yellowish tint, according to the nature and colour of the ground from which the dust arises.”
[Page 277.]—The law respecting the water of jealousy will be found Num. v. 11-31. and the Rabbinical traditions in Lightfoot, Works, i. 982. Jos. Ant. iii. 11. 6. To many readers it will doubtless appear a harsh and unequal institution, authorizing one party to impose upon the other an oath of purgation, to be taken under circumstances very painful to the feelings, to remove a suspicion which might originate in unreasonable jealousy. But it must be remembered, that the idea of equality between the parties in the conjugal relation never entered into the minds of the ancients, least of all of the Orientals; and that the jealous husband would often have taken the law into his own hands and put the suspected wife to death, if this mode of satisfying his doubts had not been prescribed by the legislator. The Mosaic law did not undertake, by a perpetual miracle, to create in a barbarous age and in the bosom of the east, a people characterised by the refined humanity and respect for the rights of human nature which the influence of Christianity and centuries of improvement have produced in modern Europe, but to soften and elevate as far as possible the national character. Regarded in this light, the Mosaic law of the water of jealousy will be considered like the institution of the cities of refuge, as a humane appointment, to moderate an evil which it was impossible to eradicate. Michaelis (Mos. Law, § 263.) has shown how well the whole ceremony was adapted to strike terror into a guilty person, and prevent all but the most abandoned and hardened from attempting to perjure themselves—so that it would rarely happen that divine interposition would be called for to punish the crime. It does not appear from the law in the book of Numbers, what was, to be the punishment of the woman, if, under the influence of conscience and apprehension, she made confession. The Rabbins say that she was to be divorced; (Lightfoot, ubi supra) they also tell us that the punishment sometimes did not follow the drinking of the water for two or three years. It seems more probable, however, that it was the intention of the lawgiver, whatever the practice might be, that the woman, if she confessed, should be punished in the usual way as an adultress. See v. 31. We are told by the Rabbins that the use of this test was abolished, when the Sanhedrim lost the power of life and death. Such an ordeal was indeed very abhorrent from the Roman jurisprudence. Lightfoot, Works, ii. 111.
It may be observed, that the law does not require the husband to put the offering of jealousy into the wife’s hand, as represented in the text, but into the priest’s.
[Page 291.]—Blowing of trumpets.] The object for which this was appointed is not well ascertained, and various fanciful reasons are given by the Jews. Reland, Ant. Heb. p. 509. Perhaps it was nothing more than to mark the commencement of the civil year.