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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comVincent Word Studies - Luke 10:13 - 10:13
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Mighty works
See on Mat 11:20.
Sackcloth (σάκκῳ)
From the Hebrew sak: what is knotted together; net-shaped; coarsely woven. It was made of goats' or camels' hair (Rev 6:12), and was a material similar to that upon which Paul wrought in tent-making. The same word in Hebrew is used to describe a grain-sack, and this coarse material of which it is made (Gen 42:25; Jos 9:4). So the Greek σαγή means a pack or baggage. The same root, according to some etymologists, appears in σαγήνη, a drag-net (see Mat 13:47), and σάγος, Latin sagum, a coarse, soldier's cloak. It was employed for the rough garments for mourners (Est 4:1; 1Ki 21:27), in which latter passage the sackcloth is put next the flesh in token of extreme sorrow. Compare 2Ki 6:30; Job 16:15.
Ashes (σποδῷ)
As a sign of mourning. Defiling one's self with dead things, as ashes or dirt, as a sign of sorrow, was common among the Orientals and Greeks. Thus Homer describes Achilles on hearing of the death of Patroclus:
“Grasping in both hands
The ashes of the hearth, he showered them o'er
His head, and soiled with them his noble face.”
Iliad, xviii., 28.
And Priam, mourning for Hector:
“In the midst the aged man
Sat with a cloak wrapped round him, and much dust
Strewn on his head and neck, which, when he rolled
Upon the earth, he gathered with his hands.”
Iliad, xxiv., 162-5.
See 1Sa 4:12; 2Sa 1:2; 2Sa 13:19; Job 2:12; Ezekiel 17:30; Rev 18:19. In Judith 4:14, 15, in the mourning over the ravages of the Assyrians, the priests minister at the altar, girded with sackcloth, and with ashes on their mitres. Sir Gardner Wilkinson, describing a funeral at Thebes, says: “Men, women, and children, with the body exposed above the waist, throw dust on their heads, or cover their faces with mud” (“Modern Egypt and Thebes”). Stifling with ashes was a Persian mode of punishment. Compare Apocrypha, 2 Maccabees 13:5-7. Herodotus relates that Nitocris, an Egyptian queen, after having drowned the murderers of her brother, threw herself into an apartment full of ashes, in order to escape the vengeance of their friends.