Ashes

Narrator: Chris Genthree
Duration: 1min
To sprinkle with or sit in ashes, marked humiliation, grief, and penitence (Gen. 18:2727And Abraham answered and said, Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, which am but dust and ashes: (Genesis 18:27); 2 Sam. 13:1919And Tamar put ashes on her head, and rent her garment of divers colors that was on her, and laid her hand on her head, and went on crying. (2 Samuel 13:19); Esth. 4:33And in every province, whithersoever the king's commandment and his decree came, there was great mourning among the Jews, and fasting, and weeping, and wailing; and many lay in sackcloth and ashes. (Esther 4:3); Job 2:88And he took him a potsherd to scrape himself withal; and he sat down among the ashes. (Job 2:8); Jer. 6:2626O daughter of my people, gird thee with sackcloth, and wallow thyself in ashes: make thee mourning, as for an only son, most bitter lamentation: for the spoiler shall suddenly come upon us. (Jeremiah 6:26); Lam. 3:1616He hath also broken my teeth with gravel stones, he hath covered me with ashes. (Lamentations 3:16); Matt. 11:2121Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works, which were done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. (Matthew 11:21)). The altar ashes, when a red heifer was sacrificed, were watered and used for purifying the unclean (Num. 19:17-2217And for an unclean person they shall take of the ashes of the burnt heifer of purification for sin, and running water shall be put thereto in a vessel: 18And a clean person shall take hyssop, and dip it in the water, and sprinkle it upon the tent, and upon all the vessels, and upon the persons that were there, and upon him that touched a bone, or one slain, or one dead, or a grave: 19And the clean person shall sprinkle upon the unclean on the third day, and on the seventh day: and on the seventh day he shall purify himself, and wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and shall be clean at even. 20But the man that shall be unclean, and shall not purify himself, that soul shall be cut off from among the congregation, because he hath defiled the sanctuary of the Lord: the water of separation hath not been sprinkled upon him; he is unclean. 21And it shall be a perpetual statute unto them, that he that sprinkleth the water of separation shall wash his clothes; and he that toucheth the water of separation shall be unclean until even. 22And whatsoever the unclean person toucheth shall be unclean; and the soul that toucheth it shall be unclean until even. (Numbers 19:17‑22)).