2 Samuel 19:4. The king covered his face, and the king cried with a loud voice, O my son Absalom! O Absalom, my son, my son!
Though concealed from sight in the upper chamber, the lamentations of the bereaved king could be easily heard by his followers, for he “cried with a loud voice.” These loud exclamations are alluded to in several other places. At Jacob’s funeral there was “a great and very sore lamentation” (Gen. 50:10). When Jephthah, after his vow, saw his daughter coming, he cried, as if she were already dead, “Alas, my daughter!” (Judg. 11:35). When the old prophet of Bethel buried in his own grave the disobedient prophet whom he had deceived to his death, he cried out, “Alas, my brother!” (1 Kings 13:30). It was among the curses heaped on Jehoiakim that he should have “the burial of an ass”(Jer. 22:19) and not be consigned to the grave with the usual lamentations. “Therefore thus saith the Lord concerning Jehoiakim the son of Josiah king of Judah; They shall not lament for him, saying, Ah my brother! or, Ah sister! they shall not lament for him, saying, Ah lord! or, Ah his glory!” (Jer. 22:18). Somewhat similar to these are the cries of the Egyptian mourners at the present time. When the master of a house dies, the wives, children, and servants cry out, “O my master!” “O my camel!” “O my lion!” “O camel of the house!” “O my glory!” “O my resource!” “O my father!” “O my misfortune!” (Lane's Modern Egyptians, vol. 2, p. 318).
Roberts, in his Oriental Illustrations, pp. 236-241, gives a number of striking specimens of Hindu lamentations over the dead. Among them are the expressions of grief uttered by a husband on the loss of his wife: “What, the apple of my eye gone! my swan, my parrot, my deer, my Lechimy! Her color was like gold; her gait was like the stately swan; her waist was like lightning; her teeth were like pearls; her eyes like the kiyal-fish (oval); her eyebrows like the bow; and her countenance like the full-blown lotus. Yes, she has gone, the mother of my children! No more welcome, no more smiles in the evening when I return. All the world to me is now as the place of burning. Get ready the wood for my pile. O my wife, my wife listen to the voice of your husband.”
A father also says over the body of his son, “My son, my son! art thou gone? What I am, I left in my old age? My lion, my arrow, my blood, my body, my soul, my third eye! Gone, gone, gone!”