811. Weeping at the Grave

 •  1 min. read  •  grade level: 8
Listen from:
John 11:31. She goeth unto the grave to weep there.
It is very common for the friends of deceased persons—especially for the women to make formal visits to the grave for the purpose of audibly expressing their grief. Professor Hackett, on visiting a Syrian town, was compelled by the quarantine officers to pitch his tent in a graveyard, where be observed a great number of women who surrounded the graves of their friends, and shrieked and wept for a long time. See Illustrations of Scripture, p. 111. Porter noticed a similar custom in the Druse country; where he found a long procession of women near a clamp of newly-made graves. “As they marched with stately steps around the tombs they sung a wild chant, that now echoed through the whole glen and now sunk into the mournful cadence of a death-wail” (Giant Cities of Bastian, p. 39). When the Jews saw Mary hastily arise and leave the house they supposed she was going to the grave according to custom. It was thus the two Marys visited the sepulcher of the Lord. See Matthew 27:61; 28:1.