Jeremiah 9:17-18. Thus saith the Lord of hosts, Consider ye, and call for the mourning women, that they may come; and send for cunning women, that they may come: and let them make haste, and take up a wailing for us, that our eyes may run down with tears, and our eyelids gush out with waters.
Not only are great lamentations made by the bereaved for their loved ones, but professed mourners, usually women, are hired for the purpose. They assemble in greater or less number, according to the ability which those who hire them have to pay for their services. Their hair is disheveled, their clothes torn, and their countenances daubed with paint and dirt. They sing in a sort of chorus, mingled with shrill screams and loud wailing, distorting their limbs frightfully, swaying their bodies to and fro, and moving in a kind of melancholy dance to the thrumming music of tambourines. They recount the virtues of the deceased, calling him by names of tenderest endearment, and plaintively inquiring of him why he left his family and friends! With wonderful ingenuity these hired mourners seek to make a genuine lamentation among the visitors who have come to the funeral, by alluding to any among them who have suffered bereavement, dwelling on its character and circumstances, and thus eliciting from the sorrowing ones cries of real grief.
Miss Rogers gives a thrilling account of a formal mourning which lasted for a week, and at which she was present for several hours. Three rows of women on the one side of the room faced three rows on the other side. They clapped their hands and struck their breasts in time to the monotonous melody they murmured. One side, led by a celebrated professional mourner, sang the praises of the dead man, while the other responded in chorus. After the singing they shrieked and made a rattling noise in their throats, while the widow kneeled, swayed her body backward and forward, and feebly joined in the wild cry.
“A minstrel woman began slowly beating a tambourine, and all the company clapped their hands in measure with it, singing, ‘Alas for him! Alas for him! He was brave, he was good; alas for him!’ Then three women rose, with naked swords in their hands, and stood at two or three yards distance from each other. They began dancing with slow and graceful movements, with their swords at first held low and their heads drooping. Each dancer kept within a circle of about a yard in diameter. By degrees the tambourine and the clapping of the hands and the songs grew louder, the steps of the dancers were quickened. They threw back their heads and gazed upward passionately, as if they would look into the very heavens, They flourished their uplifted swords, and as their movements became more wild and excited, the bright steel flashed, and bright eyes seemed to grow brighter. As one by one the dancers sank, overcome with fatigue, others rose to replace them. Thus passed seven days and nights. Professional mourners were in constant attendance to keep up the excitement, and dances and dirges succeeded each other, with intervals of wild and hysterical weeping and shrieking” (Domestic Life in Palestine, pp. 181-182).
Shaw says that the hired mourners at Moorish funerals cry out in a deep and hollow voice, several times together, Loo! loo! loo! ending each period with “some ventriloquous sighs.” See Travels, p. 242.
To this singular custom of hiring mourners the prophet refers in the text, and also in the twentieth verse. These hired mourners were present at the burial of the good king Josiah (2 Chron. 35:25). Solomon refers to them in Ecclesiastes 12:5: “The mourners go about the streets.” Amos speaks of “such as are skillful of lamentation” (Amos 5:16). Hired mourners were present with their instruments of funeral music at the house of Jairus after the death of his daughter. See Matthew 9:23; Mark 5:38.
See also note on 2 Samuel 19:4 (#285).