Topic
Bier
4 passages cited, from 4 classic reference works.
These works date from 1884–1915 and are in the public domain. They reflect the Protestant scholarship of their time: their history, archaeology and dates can be out of date, and where they interpret, other traditions read the text differently. The verses are shown in the King James Version, the wording these works were written against.
The verses
The passages the works cite, those cited by more of them first.
- Luke 7:14Easton · ISBE · Nave (A coffin)
And he came and touched the bier: and they that bare him stood still. And he said, Young man, I say unto thee, Arise.
- 2 Samuel 3:31ISBE · Nave (A coffin)
¶ And David said to Joab, and to all the people that were with him, Rend your clothes, and gird you with sackcloth, and mourn before Abner. And king David himself followed the bier.
- Numbers 19:11ISBE
¶ He that toucheth the dead body of any man shall be unclean seven days.
- John 11:35ISBE
Jesus wept.
In the reference works
Easton's Bible Dictionary (1897) · 1 references
The frame on which dead bodies were conveyed to the grave (Luke 7:14).
Smith's Bible Dictionary (1884) · 0 references
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1915) · 5 references
ber:
(1) Found in the Old Testament only in 2Sa 3:31, "and king David followed the bier"; and in the New Testament in Lu 7:14, "and he (Jesus) came nigh and touched the bier." The Hebrew word rendered "bier" (miTTah) and its Greek equivalent (soros) mean strictly "coffin." The so-called "bier" among the ancient Hebrews was simply an open coffin or a flat wooden frame, on which the body of the dead was carried from the house to the grave.
(2) Closed coffins, so universal now in the West, were unknown to common usage among the Hebrews of olden times, though not unknown to Egyptians, Greeks and Romans.
At the burial of Abner the people were commanded to "rend their clothes" and "gird themselves with sackcloth," and the king himself in token of his grief and royal regard, "followed the bier" in the procession to the grave (2Sa 3:31).
(3) Of Jesus, when He met the procession that went out of the gate of the city of Nain, bearing to the grave the only son of the widowed mother, Luke says, "When the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her .... and he came nigh and touched the bier," and commanded the young man to arise, etc. We should recall that contact with a dead body was forbidden by the law as a source of defilement (Nu 19:11 f); so Jesus here "came nigh" and "touched the bier" only in raising the young man, thus avoiding any criticism for infraction of the law. In Joh 11:35, as here, we have a miracle of Jesus which clearly pointed to a higher law--the eternal law of compassion which received its first full expression in the life of Jesus and forms one of the distinctive features of the gospel.
George B. Eager
In the topical indexes
Texts: Easton's Bible Dictionary (1897); Smith's Bible Dictionary (1884); International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1915); Nave's Topical Bible (1896), from the CrossWire SWORD modules (public domain). Verse references were parsed from the works' own markup and checked against the KJV verse list.