Date

12-4-2025

Department

Rawlings School of Divinity

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy in Bible Exposition (PhD)

Chair

Richard Alan Fuhr

Keywords

wailing women, professional mourners, mourning, repentance, penitential mourning, Jeremiah, fall of Judah

Disciplines

Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion

Abstract

The Hebrew Bible features numerous accounts of mourning that reveal it as a significant aspect of the ancient Near Eastern burial customs. Biblical mourning involves an established process of grieving the loss of a dead person by his or her family and community (Deut 34:8; 2 Sam 1:11–12). The Bible also mentions other forms of mourning besides grieving the loss of the dead. Penitential mourning is the expression of sorrow resulting from awareness of personal or corporate sin (Joel 2:12–14; Ezra 10:6). Penitential mourning could be personal or corporate (2 Sam 12:13, 16; Ezra 9:3–4). Corporate mourning involving donning of sackcloth, fasting, weeping, and wailing in the Hebrew Bible is often associated with repentance and seeking divine intervention and compassion. The second form of mourning is mourning by supplicants in distress. It involves display of mournful attitudes of weeping, wailing, fasting and dressing in sackcloth and ashes to seek divine intervention in times of crisis (Esth 4:1–3). Then there is mourning when afflicted with a skin infection (Lev 13:45–46). The Lord told Moses to tell the children of Israel that in any case of proven infectious disease, the patient is to be isolated from the camp until healed. He or she is to tear his or her cloth, leave his or her hair unkempt, cover the lower part of his face and cry, “Unclean!” (Lev 13:43–46). These are expressions associated with mourning (Gen 37:34; Num 14:6; 2 Sam 1:11).

Therefore, biblical mourning is not limited to mourning in bereavement. God himself calls for mourning sometimes which when done genuinely can be of spiritual benefit (Joel 2:12–27; Jonah 3:5–6, 10). This research argues that mourning, motivated by repentance, is a sorrowful and genuine heart condition that attracts divine forgiveness. It explores different nuances of mourning mentioned in the Hebrew Bible and other extrabiblical literature before narrowing it down to the kind of mourning that is the subject of this study—mourning in the context of repentance. Effort will be made to establish the connection between mourning and repentance including an overview of biblical perspective of the concept of repentance, and how repentance may be the solution to Judah’s situation in Jeremiah 9 to bring forgiveness and avert the judgment that led to the fall of Jerusalem in 587 BC. God and Jeremiah repeatedly pleaded with Judah to repent because this judgment need not be fulfilled (Jer 26:3, 13). The judgment pronouncement and the call for wailing women in Jer 9:17–22 has been interpreted by many as a concluded and inevitable judgment. But a closer look at the text shows it may be a prophetic projection of what is about to happen which could be averted through repentance, as in the case of Nineveh (Jonah 3:10). Penitential mourning leads to forgiveness, the renewal of covenant relationship with God, restoration of covenant blessings, and averts judgment (Joel 2:12–27).

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