From the above account it will be seen that in strictly Bible lands we have representatives of mountain forms owing their origin to the various modes of natural operations which in past ages have diversified the surface of our globe.
A few special biblical references to mountains may be noted. ‘Mountain of God’ (oxy 13) in Ps 68" is general=a God’s mountain, indicating greatness or majesty. On the other hand, Sinai or Horeb is called ‘the mountain of God’ in a special sense (Ex 477 18° 9418. ] Καὶ 198; cf. ma 70 in Nu 10%). The ‘mount of congregation’ (RV; better, ‘mountain of meeting or assembly, 7yi> 70) in Is 14° refers to the dwelling-place of the gods, which the Babylonians located in the far north. See CONGREGATION in vol. i. p. 466°. Mountains are frequently alluded to in connexion with theo-
hanies ; they melt at the presence of J”, Jg 5°,
s 975 ete. ; they are called on to cover the guilty from His face, Hos 108, Lk 23° ||; they leap in praise of J”, Ps 114*°; they are called on to wit- ness His dealings with His people, Mic 6? ete. ete. Mountains were resurted to as hiding-places in time of war, Jg 6?, Mt 9418}; they were hunting- grounds, 1 S 26”; grazing-places for cattle, Ps 50"
* G. Schumacher, ‘The Jaulin,’ PE F'St, 1866-1888.
+ O. M. Doughty, Arabia Deserta, 2 vols. (1888).
t The age of these volcanic eruptions is discussed in the present writer's ‘Physical Geology of Arabia Petrwa and Pales tine,’ PEF Mem. p. 98 (1886).
MOURNING
etc. ; places of illicit worship, Is 65’, Ezk 6 ; beacon stations, Is 307; lurking-places for ambnscade,
Jg 9%, Mountains are typical of difficulties,
Zec 47. Their removal is spoken of by our Lord as
a type of what is possible to strong faith, Mt 17” ||. E. HULL.
MOURNING (52x ‘mourn’; 73x ‘sigh or groan’; np; ‘lament’; 15D ‘ wail’ (κόπτεσθαι) ; θρηνεῖν, πενθεῖν) in Scripture is sometimes attributed in a figurative sense to Nature,—the withering of the pastures beneath and the blackening of the sky above, the wasting of the frnit-trees, and the destruction of the beasts of the field, of the fowl of the air, of the fish of the sea, being at once the effects of God’s judg- ments upon her for man’s sin and the manifestations of her sorrow and grief as the sharer of his punish- ment and misery (Jer 433, Hos 4%, 5] 1102), Ina like figurative sense it is attributed to nations, and especially to Israel, as when the prophet (J1 18) summons the daughter of Zion to repent- ance, and bids her ‘lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth for the husband of her youth’; or when, in a time of famine, Judah is said to mourn (Jer 143), and the people assembled at the gates are in deep mourning, and sit humbly on the ground; or when, again, it is predicted (Zee 12'°"4) that, in the day of the outpouring of the Spirit of grace and supplication upon the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, ‘ they shall look unto me whom they have pierced, an ney shall mourn for him as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him as one that is in bitterness for his first-born’ (RV). With a moral connotation, too, expressive of sorrow for sin, or distress for the miseries of the nation, it is ascribed to individuals, as to Daniel (103), to Ezra (10°), and to Nehemiah (1*), while Ahab in penitential mourning rends his clothes and puts sackcloth upon his flesh, and fasts like a man sorrowing for the dead (1 K 21”).
Mourning in the literal sense, as the expression of sorrow for the dead, appears in Scripture not only with all its ordinary natural manifestations, but also with the large y of conventional and formulated grief which usage had gathered round it among the Israelites as among other Oriental peoples. However ready to submit to the will of God without murmur or complaint, the Oriental is demonstrative in the social and public manifesta- tions of his sorrow, and has reduced the expression of his tine for the dead to a system which tends to crush out natural feeling. In Jer 1605 and Ezk 24'°-17 together there is a fairly complete list of the mourning customs of Israel.
mening is the most general and most strongly marked expression of pain or mental emotion, and is the primary and, indeed, universal expression of mourning for the dead. This, like other mani- festations of oeee emotion, is more under control among civilized than uncivilized peoples, and more restrained among the staid and unimpassioned people of the West than the lively and excitable children of the East. ‘Englishmen,’ says Darwin (The Expression of the Emotions, p. 155), ‘ rarely ne except under the pressure of the acutest grief.’ . Sls funerals,’ says arp (The Struggle of the Nations, p. 511),—and his description of Egyptian mourning finds frequent parallels among the ἘΣ ΞΕ were not like those to which we are accustomed,—mute ceremonies, in which sorrow is barely expressed by a furtive tear: noise, sob- bings, and wild gestures were their necessary con- comitants. Not only was it customary to hire
weeping women, who tore their hair, filled the air |