* forty days.
We learn from the Greek historians, that the time of mourning
was while the body remained with the embalmers, which
Herodotus says was seventy days. During this time the body
lay in nitre, the use of which was to dry up all its
superfluous and noxious moisture: and when, in the space of
30; days, this was sufficiently effected, the remaining forty,
the time mentioned by Diodorus, were employed in anointing it
with gums and spices to preserve it, which was properly the
embalming. This sufficiently explains the phraseology of the
text.
* mourned. Heb. wept. three-score.
Nu 20:29 De 21:13 34:8
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