Boyd’s Bible Dictionary:
Burial places among Hebrews were caves, recesses in rocks, natural or artificial, and walled sepulchers
[SEPULCHER.]
Concise Bible Dictionary:
See GRAVE.
“738. Tombs for Dwellings” From Manners and Customs of the Bible:
Mark 5:2-3. When he was come out of the ship, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit, who had his dwelling among the tombs.
See also Luke 8:27.
Tombs hewn out of the rock were sometimes made hiding-places for criminals, dwellings for poor people, and abodes for the insane. By reading the description of these tombs contained in the note on Isaiah 22:16 (#501), it can be seen that they might readily be converted into places of shelter by persons whose tastes were not fastidious, or whose necessities compelled them to seek a refuge. Isaiah describes the idolatrous Hebrews of his time as a people who “remain among the graves, and lodge in the monuments” (Isa. 65:4). This is supposed to have been done from the superstitious notion, which they had learned from the heathen, that the dreams which they would have in such desolate to places would be a revelation of future events.
At the present day travelers in Palestine sometimes find a temporary asylum for the night in the old tombs, which are no longer used for burial purposes. Buckingham, who visited a number of tombs in the very region where the incident referred to in the text took place, found a carpenter’s shop in an old sepulcher. He went into another which was used as a dwelling. “The tomb was about eight feet in height on the inside, as there was a descent of a steep step from the stone threshold to the floor. Its size was about twelve paces square; but, as no light was received into it except by the door, we could not see whether there was an inner chamber as in some of the others. A perfect sarcophagus still remained within, and this was now used by the family as a chest for corn and other provisions, so that this violated sepulcher of the dead had thus become a secure, a cool, and a convenient retreat to the living of a different race” (Travels in Palestine, p. 440).
“773. Neglected Tombs” From Manners and Customs of the Bible:
Luke 11:44. Ye are as graves which appear not, and the men that walk over them are not aware of them.
There is an allusion here to the custom spoken of in the note on Matthew 23:27 (#702), though the reference in this text to the neglect of the custom rather than to its observance. When the customary whitewashing of a fiat tomb was neglected its presence was easily concealed from view, and the passer-by might walk upon it and thus become ceremonially defiled.
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