This animal was reputed by the Hebrews to be clean, and was generally made use of by them for sacrifices. The Egyptians had a particular veneration for it, and paid divine honours to it; and the Jews imitated them in the worship of the golden calves or bulls, in the wilderness, and in the kingdom of Israel. The wild bull is found in the Syrian and Arabian deserts. It is frequently mentioned by the Arabian poets, who are copious in their descriptions of hunting it, and borrow many images from its beauty, strength, swiftness, and the loftiness of its horns. They represent it as fierce and untamable; as being white on the back, and having large shining eyes. Bulls, in a figurative and allegorical sense, are taken for powerful, fierce, and insolent enemies, Psalm xxii, 12; lxviii, 30.
BULRUSH, גמא, Exodus ii, 3; Job viii, 11; Isaiah xviii, 2; xxxv, 7. A plant growing on the banks of the Nile, and in marshy grounds. The stalk rises to the height of six or seven cubits, beside two under water. This stalk is triangular, and terminates in a crown of small filaments resembling hair, which the ancients used to compare to a thyrsus. This reed, the Cyperus papyrus of Linnæus, commonly called “the Egyptian reed,” was of the greatest use to the inhabitants of the country where it grew; the pith contained in the stock served them for food, and the woody part for building vessels, figures of which are to be seen on the engraven stones and other monuments of Egyptian antiquity. For this purpose they made it up, like rushes, into bundles; and, by tying these bundles together, gave their vessels the necessary shape and solidity. “The vessels of bulrushes,” or papyrus, “that are mentioned in sacred and profane history,” says Dr. Shaw, “were no other than large fabrics of the same kind with that of Moses, Exodus ii, 3; which, from the late introduction of plank and stronger materials, are now laid aside.” Thus Pliny takes notice of the “naves papyraceas armamentaque Nili,” “ships made of papyrus, and the equipments of the Nile;” and he observes, “ex ipsâ quidem papyro navigia texunt,” “of the papyrus itself they construct sailing vessels.” Herodotus and Diodorus have recorded the same fact; and among the poets, Lucan, “Conseritur bibulâ Memphitis cymba papyro,” “the Memphian” or Egyptian boat[boat] is made of the thirsty papyrus; where the epithet bibulâ, “drinking,” “soaking,” “thirsty,” is particularly remarkable, as corresponding with great exactness to the nature of the plant, and to its Hebrew name, which signifies to soak or drink up. These vegetables require much water for their growth; when, therefore, the river on whose banks they grew was reduced, they perished sooner than other plants. This explains Job viii, 11, where the circumstance is referred to as an image of transient prosperity: “Can the flag grow without water? Whilst it is yet in its greenness, and not cut down, it withereth before any other herb.”
BURIAL, 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,