[2645] The mourning up to the time of burial or during the first day was termed Aninah (widowed-mourning, moaning) Jer. Horay. 48 a. The following three, seven, or thirty days (as the case might be) were those of Ebhel, mourning.' Other forms of the same word need not be mentioned.
[2646] Jer. Ber. 5 d.
[2647] Kethub. iv. 4.
[2648] Mass. Semach. i. 9.
[2649] Of these a number of instances are given in the Talmud - though probably only of the prologue, or epilogue, or of the most striking thoughts.
[2650] Shabb. 153 a.
[2651] Moed K. 25 a.
[2652] Sanh. 46 b.
[2653] Shabb. 153 a.
[2654] Shabb. 153 a.
[2655] Ber. R. 17 end.
[2656] Ber. 19 a.
[2657] Jer. Kil 32 b; Ber. R. 100.
[2658] Par. xii. 9.
[2659] Moed K. 27 a and b.
[2660] Semach. c. 8.
[2661] Bez. 6 a Nidd. 37 a.
[2662] Moed K. 27 b; Ber. 53 a.
[2663] Jer. Sheq. ii. 7.
[2664] It is evident the young man could not have been coffined,' or it would have been impossible for him to sit up at Christ's bidding. I must differ from the learned Delitzsch, who uses the word {hebrew} in translating sors. Very remarkable also it seems to me, that those who advocate wicker-basket interments are without knowing it, resorting to the old Jewish practice.
[2665] Ber. iii. 1.
[2666] Ber. 18 a.
[2667] Jer. Sot. 17 b, end.
[2668] Sometimes the lament was chaunted simply in chorus, at others one woman began and then the rest joined in chorus. The latter was distinctively termed the Qinah, see Moed K. iii. 9.
[2669] Keth. 17 a; Moed K. 27 b.
[2670] Apparently sometimes torches were used at funerals (Ber. 53 a).
[2671] The term krios for the Lord' is peculiar to St. Luke and St. John - a significant conjunction. It occurs only once in St. Mark (xvi. 19).
[2672] Moed K. 8 a, lines 7 and 8 from bottom.
[2673] So literally. We here recall the unfeeling threats by R. Huna of further bereavements to a mother who wept very much, and their fulfilment (Moed. K. 27 b).
[2674] Kei. i.
[2675] So literally - and very significantly.
[2676] Minor difficulties may be readily dismissed. Such is the question, why this miracle has not been recorded by St. Matthew. Possibly St. Matthew may have remained a day behind in Capernaum. In any case, the omission cannot be of real importance as regards the question of the credibility of such a miracle, since similar miracles are related in all the four Gospels.
[2677] So Keim, who finally arrives at the conclusion that the event is fictitious His account seems to me painfully unfair, as well as unsatisfactory in the extreme.
[2678] This is the admission of Keim.
[2679] Euseb. Hist. Eccl. iv. 3.
[2680] Acts xvii. 32; xxvi. 8; 1 Cor. xv. 12-19.
[2681] 2 Pet. i. 16.
[2682] The term x sunkura x rendered in the A.V. chance' (St. Luke x. 31), means literally, the coming together, the meeting, A.V. chance' (St. Luke x. 31), means literally, the coming together, the meeting, or concurrence of events.
[2683] Lit. fear took all.'
[2684] ti.
[2685] Significantly, the same expression as in St. Luke i. 68.
[2686] The embassy of the Baptist will be described in connection with the account of his martyrdom. __________________________________________________________________
CHAPTER XXI. THE WOMAN WHICH WAS A SINNER
(St. Luke vii. 36-50.)
The precise date and place of the next recorded event in this Galilean journey of the Christ are left undetermined. It can scarcely have occurred in the quiet little town of Nain, indeed, is scarcely congruous with the scene which had been there enacted. And yet it must have followed almost immediately upon it. We infer this, not only from the silence of St. Matthew, which in this instance might have been due, not to the temporary detention of that Evangelist in Capernaum, while the others had followed Christ to Nain, but to what may be called the sparingness of detail in the Gospel-narratives, each Evangelist relating mostly only one in a group of kindred events. [2687] But other indications determine our inference. The embassy of the Baptist's disciples (which will be described in another connection) [2688] undoubtedly followed on the raising of the young man of Nain. This embassy would scarcely have come to Jesus in Nain. It probably reached Him on His farther Missionary journey, to which there seems some reference in the passage in the First Gospel [2689] which succeeds the account of that embassy. The actual words there recorded can, indeed, scarcely have been spoken at that time. They belong to a later period on that Mission-journey, and mark more fully developed opposition and rejection of the Christ than in those early days. Chronologically, they are in their proper place in St. Luke's Gospel, [2690] where they follow in connection with that Mission of the Seventy, which, in part at least, was prompted by the growing enmity to the Person of Jesus. On the other hand, this Mission of the Seventy, is not recorded by St. Matthew. Accordingly, he inserts those prophetic denunciations which, according to the plan of his Gospel, could not have been omitted, at the beginning of this Missionary journey, because it marks the beginning of that systematic opposition, [2691] the full development of which, as already stated, prompted the Mission of the Seventy.