Jó 2:12

12. They lifted up their voice Sir John Chardin (year 1676) says of the people of Asia, that “their cries are long in the case of death, and frightful, for the mourning is right-down despair, and an image of hell.”

The moment the mistress of the house next to his (at Ispahan) expired, “all the family, to the number of twenty-five or thirty people, set up such a furious cry that I was quite startled, and was above two hours before I could recover myself. These cries continue a long time, then cease all at once; they begin again as suddenly at daybreak, and in concert. It is this suddenness which is so terrifying, together with a greater shrillness and loudness than one could easily imagine. This enraged kind of mourning, if I may call it so, continued forty days not equally violent, but with diminution from day to day.”

Sprinkled dust upon their heads In a funeral procession, depicted on one of the tombs of ancient Egypt, there first come eight men throwing dust upon their heads, and giving other demonstrations of grief. The procession closes with eight or more women beating themselves, throwing dust on their heads, and singing the funeral dirge. Wilkinson. (See also Joshua 7:6; 1 Samuel 4:12.) “For after the death of any of them, [the Egyptians,] all the friends and kindred of the deceased throw dirt upon their heads, and run about through the city mourning and lamenting.” Diodorus Siculus, vol. i, chap. 7. A like custom prevailed among the Greeks ( Iliad, Job 18:21) and the Ninevites, as appears in the annals of Assurbanipal. The friends threw the dust heavenward, that, falling, it might cover the entire body; and thus, as Homer says, “deform it with dust;” or the act may have been symbolical being either a solemn recognition of God, as the author of the evil, or an acknowledgment of man’s frailty and dependence.