Little mention is made of the burials of the kings of the ten tribes. Some, who died in power, were buried at their capital, Samaria (2 Kings x. 35 ; xiii. 9 ; xiv. 16). Many, who perished by con spiracies which overthrew their line, and were not aimed, as generally in the cases of the kings of Judah, against themselves only, probably were left unburied. The relations of the sovereign and people were not the same as those between the legitimate kings of the house of David and their subjects, and this will explain why there is no allusion to any public honours or the want of them, in the case of any king of the ten tribes ; besides that the impiety of these kings would have alien ated from them the love of the people, or at least of those who would have been most disposed to pay such respect to the dead.
Further light is thrown on funeral rites during the period of the kings by passages in the contem porary books of the Old Testament. The custom of having hired mourners to make lamentation at the funeral time as well as at the ceremony, is referred to in the exhortation at the close of Ecclesiastes— Because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets' (xii. 5). Jeremiah also speaks of ' the mourn ing women' (ix. 17-22) ; and we read respect ing Josiah's death, ' And Jeremiah lamented for Josiah : and all the singing men and the singing women spake of Josiah in their lamentations to this day, and made them an ordinance in Israel : and behold, they [are] written in the lamentations' (2 Chron. xxxv. 25). In this case it may be that the actual funeral rites are not referred to, but the general lamentation on the death of the king, especially as the circumstances of the kingdom were such that it is probable, as already suggested, that he had a hurried burial. The customs of the Jews in our Lord's time, when minstrels attended at a house of mourning, chew, however, that we must not too positively infer this. A full notice of mourn ing customs is where Ezekiel is commanded not to observe any for his wife. ' Son of man, behold, I take away from thee the desire of thine eyes with a stroke ; yet neither shalt thou mourn nor weep, neither shall thy tears run down. Be silent, make no mourning for the dead, bind the tire of thine head upon thee, and put on thy shoes upon thy feet, and cover not [thy] lip, and eat not the bread of men' (Ezek. xxiv. 16, 17; comp. 22, 23). Here we see no reference to prohibited customs, though mourning for a wife was not specially allowed to the priests as it was for parents, etc. It is remarkable that some of the practices are the same as those commanded to a person proved a leper, who may therefore have been held by the Law to be socially dead ; but it must be remembered that some of those concerned in burial-rites must have been rendered unclean, so that the leper may have been commanded to appear unclean, and not as a mourner. He was to have rent clothes, a bare head, and to have a covering upon his upper lip (Lev. xiii. 45). Jeremiah alludes to prevailing mourning customs, which included those forbidden in the Law. He prophesies that the dead of his people should be left unburied, which is spoken of as a great calamity in Ecclesiastes (vi. 3), that there
should be no mourning for them, that people should not cut themselves, nor make themselves bald, nor hold a funeral repast (Jer. xvi. 1-7). The house of mourning here mentioned (5) may only mean a house at the time of a funeral (comp. S). In the same book we read how Ishmael the son of Nethaniah deceived, and for the most part killed, fourscore men,' thus described, having their beards shaven, and their clothes rent, and having cut themselves, with offerings and incense in their hand, to bring [them] to the house of the Lord' (xli. 5) :—the temple not yet being destroyed. These were probably mourners, or, perhaps, they did this on account of the calamities of the country. Isaiah prophesies of the people of Moab, that in their overthrow they should lament, on all their heads baldness, every beard cut off' (xv. 2); and Jeremiah, of the same people, on the same or a like occasion, Every head bald, and every beard dimi nished : upon all the hands cuttings, and upon the loins sackcloth,' adding that there should be general lamentations on the housetops and in the streets (xlviii. 37, 3S). The same prophet speaks of bald ness and cutting among the Philistines (xlvii. 5). The customs forbidden to the Israelites seem there fore to have been generally prevalent in Palestine.
Respecting the tombs of subjects, they appear to have been very marked in some cases ; for when Josiah took out bones from the sepulchres at Bethel and burnt them on the idolatrous altar, he refrained from disturbing the remains of the pro phet who came from Judah, and who had foretold that this would come to pass, and those of the Israelite prophet buried with him, because he saw a pillar,' known by the people of the city to mark the tomb where they lay (2 Kings xxiii. 15 IS). These sepulchres were in the mount,' from which it might appear probable that they were excavations in the side of a hill rather than structures, did not the `pillar' seem to indi cate a structure or pit beneath it. It is notice able that the word rendered pillar, in, is also used of an ordinary gravestone, not set up out of regard, but simply to mark that a body was beneath (Ezek. xxxix. Is) ; its radical meaning would be something set up. In the case where we read pillar,' it must either have been dis tinguished by its form, or have borne an inscrip tion. There is an important notice of an excavated sepulchre, evidently at Jerusalem, where Isaiah prophesies against Shebna the treasurer, who had made a tomb for himself, that he would be carried captive and die far from his chosen burying-place. ' Thus saith the Lord GOD of hosts, Go, get thee unto this treasurer, unto Shebna, which [is] over the house, [and say,] What hast thou here, and whom hast thou here, that thou hast hewed thee out a sepulchre here, as he that heweth him out a sepul chre on high, that graveth an habitation for himself in a rock ?' (xxii. 15-19). Here we are at once reminded of the tombs excavated in the sides of the valleys around Jerusalem, for it is scarcely proba ble that a mere pit would have been an ostentatious mark of security.