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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comFausset Bible Dictionary: Burial
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The Jews entombed, if possible, or else inferred, their dead; the rabbis alleging as a reason" Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return" (). Even enemies received burial (). The law ordained the same treatment of the malefactor (). Nothing but extreme profanity on the part of the deceased during life was deemed a warrant for disturbing their remains (-17; -2). A cave was the usual tomb, as Palestine abounds in caves. The funeral rites were much less elaborate than those of the Egyptians. Jacob and Joseph dying in Egypt were embalmed; the Egyptians, through lack of a better hope, endeavoring to avert or delay corruption. Kings and prophets alone were buried within the walls of towns. A strong family feeling led the Israelites to desire burial in the same tomb as their forefathers.
So Jacob (-32). The burial place of Sarah, Abraham, Isaac, Rebekah, Leah, and Jacob, in the field of Machpelah (Genesis 23), bought by Abraham from Ephron the Hittite, and the field bought by Jacob from Shechem's father, Hamor, where Joseph's bones were buried (), were the only fixed possessions the patriarchs had in Canaan, and the sole purchases they made there. They felt their bodies belonged to the Lord. To be excluded from the family burying place, as Uzziah and Manasseh were, was deemed an indignity. ; ; compare -31, which shows it was a mark of great respect to one not of one's family to desire burial with him (compare ). The greatest indignity was to be denied burial (; ; -19; -14).
David's magnanimity appears in his care to restore his enemy Saul's remains to the paternal tomb. To give a place in one's own sepulchre was a special honor; as the children of Heth offered Abraham, and as Jehoiada was buried among the kings (; ). So Joseph of Arimathea could not have done a greater honor to our crucified Lord's body than giving it a place in his own new tomb, fulfilling the prophecy (-42). A common tomb for all the kindred, with galleries, is not uncommon in the East. Burning was only practiced in peculiar circumstances, as in the case of Saul's and his sons' mutilated headless bodies, where regular burial was impossible and there was a possibility of the Philistines coming and mutilating them still more. However, the bones were not burned but buried (-13). Also in a plague, to prevent contagion (-10).
Costly spices were wrapped up in the linen swathes round the corpse, and also were burnt at the funeral (); so Nicodemus honored Jesus with 100 pounds weight of "myrrh and aloes." The rapidity of decomposition in the hot East, and the legal uncleanness of association with a dead body, caused immediate interment; as in the case of Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5; -14). Hired mourners with shrill pipes increased the sound of wailings for the dead (; ; ). The body without any coffin was carried to burial on a bier (). A napkin was bound round the head, and linen bandages wound round the body (; ). The whole of the preparations are included in the Greek word entafiasmos which Jesus uses ().
After burial the funeral feast followed (-8). , "Eat not the bread of men," i.e. the bread or viands, as well as "the cup of consolation," which men usually bring mourners in token of sympathy. The law () forbade cuttings in the flesh for the dead, usual among the pagan. Families often reduced their means by lavish expenditure in gifts at funerals, to which there may be reference in . By the law also nothing ought to be carried into a mourning house (as being unclean) of that which was sanctified, as for instance tithes. Samuel was buried in his own house at Ramah; and the sepulchers of Judah's kings were in the city of David ().
Fine ranges of tombs, said to be of the kings, judges, and prophets, still remain near Jerusalem; but these, many think, are the tomb of Helena, the widow of the king of Adiabene, who settled at Jerusalem and relieved poor Jews in the famine foretold by Agabus under Claudius Caesar. The "graves of the children of the people" were and are in the valley of Kedron or Jehoshaphat (); and on the graves of them that had sacrificed to the idols and groves Josiah strawed the dust of their idols (): "the graves of the common people" outside the city (). Tophet, the valley E. of the city, was once the haunt of Moloch worship, but was doomed to defilement by burials there (; ).
"The potters' field," with its holes dug out for clay, afforded graves ready made "to bury strangers in." Tombs were often cut out of the living rock. One of the kings' tombs near Jerusalem has a large circular stone set on its edge. A deep recess is cut in the solid rock at the left of the door, into which the stone might be rolled aside, when the tomb was opened; when closed, the stone would be rolled back to its proper place. The disk is large enough, not only to cover the entrance, but also to fit into another recess at the right of the door, and thus completely shut it in. There is an incline to its proper place, so that to roll it back is much harder than to roll it into it. The women going to Jesus' tomb might well say," Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulchre?" (.)
Mary stooped to look in, because the door was low; the angel sat on the stone rolled aside into its recess, as the women drew near (; ; compare ; ). Demoniacs and outcasts would haunt such tombs for shelter, when open (; ). Sepulchers used to be whitened, after the rains, before the Passover, each year, to guard against any defiling himself by touching them. This explains Jesus' comparison of hypocrites to "whited sepulchers" (). To repair the prophets' tombs was regarded as an act of great piety ().