ʾĒbel names mourning in selected bereavement, threatened-community and comfort passages. Deuteronomy 34:8 records Israel's thirty days of mourning for Moses, while Ecclesiastes 7:2 urges the living to take mortality to heart in the house of mourning.
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Full entry for אֵבֶל (H60) · Open the biblical lexicon
ʾĒbel names mourning in selected bereavement, threatened-community and comfort passages. Deuteronomy 34:8 records Israel's thirty days of mourning for Moses, while Ecclesiastes 7:2 urges the living to take mortality to heart in the house of mourning.
The BSB source-word alignment has 24 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include Mourn (3), of mourning (3), into mourning (2), mourning (2), to mourning (2).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Genesis 27:41. Its strongest book concentrations include Genesis (4), 2 Samuel (3), Amos (3), Jeremiah (3).
ʾĒbel names mourning in selected bereavement, threatened-community and comfort passages. Deuteronomy 34:8 records Israel's thirty days of mourning for Moses, while Ecclesiastes 7:2 urges the living to take mortality to heart in the house of mourning. The first is a particular narrated period and the second a wisdom comparison; neither establishes one compulsory timetable or emotional presentation for every bereaved person.
Esther 4:3 describes mourning across provinces under the threatening royal decree, so the word need not wait for a death already completed. Isaiah 61:3 promises comfort and a changed condition for mourners in Zion within a commissioned restoration address. These contexts allow sorrow to be named alongside hope without making the noun evidence of faithlessness. Teachers should explain the cause, community and promised response before asking readers to move toward joy, leaving room for the genuine duration and differing expression of grief.
Moses' bereavement period, mortality-minded wisdom, communal distress under threat and promised comfort locate mourning in distinct circumstances. Narrative duration and restoration promise should not become an imposed emotional schedule for every person hearing the study.
The Israelites grieved for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days, until the time of weeping and mourning for Moses came to an end.
Israel mourns Moses for the stated thirty-day period before the account turns to Joshua. The historical duration does not dictate when every later person's grief must end.
It is better to enter a house of mourning than a house of feasting, since death is the end of every man, and the living should take this to heart.
The house of mourning reminds the living of everyone's mortality. The wisdom contrast calls for serious attention rather than a command to manufacture misery or avoid all celebration.
In every province to which the king’s command and edict came, there was great mourning among the Jews. They fasted, wept, and lamented, and many lay in sackcloth and ashes.
The decree produces mourning, fasting, weeping and lament across provinces. The community responds to a real threat, not merely to a completed funeral event.
To console the mourners in Zion—to give them a crown of beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, and a garment of praise for a spirit of despair. So they will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified.
Mourners in Zion are addressed by a commissioned promise of comfort and changed condition. The passage's hope must not be converted into a demand that an individual stop grieving immediately.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Hebrew word. Emotional and ritual expression of grief, often public lamentation that includes physical gestures and verbal wailing
Emotional and ritual expression of grief, often public lamentation that includes physical gestures and verbal wailing
lamentation BDB: mourning Usage: mourning.
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 2 selected witnesses from 24 lexical occurrence verses.
אֵבֶל is built from this root:
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
Esther's threatened communities mourn before the feared destruction takes place. Their response shows that grief language can name the weight of danger and uncertainty as well as a funeral. Deuteronomy records mourning after Moses' death, while Ecclesiastes gives the house of mourning a role in wise attention to mortality. Each setting has its own cause and purpose; one cannot be made a test for whether another person's sorrow is valid.
Isaiah's promise to comfort mourners speaks hope into a named restoration setting. John 11:32-37 records Jesus' tears among people grieving Lazarus, giving a Christian witness that compassionate presence does not require rebuking tears. The passages permit teaching about hope without imposing the expression or duration of someone else's grief. A listener may learn from mortality, receive comfort and still need space to mourn; the noun does not make those responses mutually exclusive.
Eccl.7.2
Mourning names a response to bereavement or threatened calamity in these witnesses. Related actions such as fasting, weeping and lament are listed alongside it in Esther, but the noun does not require every person to display all those actions identically.
John 11:32-37 portrays Jesus' tears in the presence of people grieving Lazarus, and Second Corinthians 1:3-7 commends shared comfort amid trouble. These Christian witnesses support compassionate presence alongside hope. Neither passage makes the Hebrew mourning noun a universal schedule or forbids a faithful person from grieving.