Genesis 50 · Symbol · Grief and Loss
The Words Evel and Lupe
Words for mourning and grief stand in the law, the prophets, the Gospels, the letters and Revelation.
When Esau planned to kill his brother, he waited for "the days of mourning for my father," the first place the Hebrew Bible uses the noun ʼêbel.
Truly, truly, I tell you, you will weep and wail while the world rejoices. You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy.
- The word
- אֵבֶל (ʼêbel), H60
- First appears
- Genesis 27:41 “Esau held a grudge against Jacob because of…”
Summary
Scripture's words for mourning and grief cover a family's rites at a burial, a nation's cry under judgment, the sorrow of friends at parting and an apostle's grief for his people. Each word takes its sense from the sentence it stands in, so the reader learns which grief is meant from the verse around the word. Read that way, the words show grief named honestly before God in both Testaments, and they show God answering it.
- ʼÊbel (H60) and its verb ʼâbal (H56) name mourning in Hebrew, and lýpē (G3077) and its verb lypéō (G3076) name grief in Greek.
- The prophets and the Gospel of John both speak of mourning turned to joy, and both place the turn in what God does.
- In 2 Corinthians 7:10 Paul sets hē kata theon lýpē, the grief according to God, which works repentance, against the grief of the world, which works death.
Mourning at the Threshing Floor of Atad
The burial of Jacob holds the Hebrew noun ʼêbel twice in one verse.
The question here is what the Hebrew and Greek words for mourning and sorrow mean in the verses where they stand, and what those verses do with the grief they name. The answer belongs to the trial of grief and loss, because these are the words Scripture uses when God's people bury their dead and when they grieve in other ways.
The page gives the chief Hebrew noun, ʼêbel, and the chief Greek noun, lýpē, with their verbs and their senses. It traces ʼêbel from the burial of Jacob to the prophets who promise that mourning will be turned to joy, and lýpē from Jesus' farewell to His disciples to Paul's letters. It also gives three cautions that keep a reader from making a word say more than its sentence says.
When they reached the threshing floor of Atad, which is across the Jordan, they lamented and wailed loudly, and Joseph mourned for his father seven days.This is the first verse where ʼêbel names a mourning actually kept for one who has died.
The Canaanites who saw it said, "This is a solemn ceremony of mourning by the Egyptians" (Genesis 50:11). In the Hebrew the words are ʼêbel kâbêd, a heavy mourning. The verse ends, "Thus the place across the Jordan is called Abel-mizraim," and the first part of the name, ʼĀbēl, sounds like the noun ʼêbel.
Six Words for Mourning and Grief
Three Hebrew words and three Greek words, with the books that hold most of their uses.
The Greek verb lypéō is the most frequent of the three Greek words, and twelve of its uses stand in 2 Corinthians.
| Word | Sense | Uses | Verses | Where most uses stand |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hebrew words | ||||
| ʼêbel, אֵבֶל, H60, noun | mourning; lamentation | 24 | 22 | Genesis 4, Amos 3, Jeremiah 3, 2 Samuel 3 |
| ʼâbal, אָבַל, H56, verb | to mourn; to bewail | 39 | 38 | Isaiah 6, Jeremiah 5, 2 Samuel 4 |
| ʼâbêl, אָבֵל, H57, adjective | mourning | 8 | 8 | Isaiah 3 |
| Greek words | ||||
| lýpē, λύπη, G3077, noun | grief; sadness | 16 | 14 | 2 Corinthians 6, John 4, Philippians 2 |
| lypéō, λυπέω, G3076, verb | to grieve; to distress | 26 | 21 | 2 Corinthians 12, Matthew 6 |
| pénthos, πένθος, G3997, noun | grief; mourning | 5 | 4 | Revelation 4, James 1 |
lypéō, λυπέω, G3076, verb, pénthos, πένθος, G3997, noun
ʼÊbel from Moses to Amos
The noun names a people's rite, a wise man's lesson and a nation's grief under judgment.
THIRTY DAYS FOR MOSES
Israel kept the mourning for Moses in the plains of Moab for a month and then ended it.
THE HOUSE OF MOURNING
The Teacher sends the living to the house of mourning because death is the end of every man.
DANCING TURNED TO MOURNING
The poet of Lamentations uses ʼêbel for the grief of Jerusalem after its fall.
MOURNING FOR AN ONLY SON
Amos uses ʼêbel twice in one verse for the grief the LORD will bring on Israel's feasts.
Dancing turned to mourning, Mourning for an only son
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.The prophet names the oil of joy given in place of ʼêbel, so the noun stands inside a promise.
Then the maidens will rejoice with dancing, young men and old as well. I will turn their mourning into joy, and give them comfort and joy for their sorrow.The LORD Himself is the one who turns ʼêbel into joy, in the chapter that promises the new covenant.
The book of Esther ends on the same turn. Mordecai fixed the feast of Purim for "the month in which their sorrow turned to joy and their mourning into a holiday" (Esther 9:22), and the word for mourning there is ʼêbel.
Three Cautions in Reading the Words
Each caution comes from the verses themselves and from Strong's definitions of the words.
The land that mournsH56 in Isaiah 24 and Jeremiah 12
The verb ʼâbal is used of people and also of the ground. The Berean text reads, "The earth mourns and withers" (Isaiah 24:4). Jeremiah asks, "How long will the land mourn and the grass of every field be withered?" in Jeremiah 12:4. The STEP Bible's word-by-word glosses render the same verb "dried up" in several of these verses. A reader learns from such verses that a parched land is pictured as a mourner, and keeps the picture of dryness to the verses whose subject is the land.
One noun for several griefsG3077 in John 16 and 2 Corinthians 9
The same noun names the disciples' grief at the news of Jesus' going: "your hearts are filled with sorrow because I have told you these things" (John 16:6). In the next part of the discourse it names the pain of labour: "A woman has pain in childbirth because her time has come" (John 16:21). In a letter about the collection for Jerusalem it names reluctance in giving, "not out of regret or compulsion" (2 Corinthians 9:7).
Loud weeping and quiet tearsG2799 and G1145 in John 11
John uses klaíō (G2799) when Mary and the Jews who came with her weep (John 11:33), and dakrýō (G1145) when "Jesus wept" (John 11:35). Strong's definition of klaíō reads "to sob, i.e. wail aloud (whereas 1145 is rather to cry silently)" under the number G2799. John 11:35 is the only verse of the New Testament with dakrýō, so the line between the two verbs comes from Strong and cannot be tested against other uses. What the chapter itself says is that Jesus "was deeply moved in spirit and troubled" (John 11:33) before He wept.
Lýpē and Lypéō in the New Testament
Jesus and Paul use the noun and the verb for grief that God will answer.
In John 16:20 Jesus gathers four Greek words of sorrow into one sentence: klaíō, to weep, thrēnéō, to lament, lypéō, to grieve, and the noun lýpē. The world rejoices in the same verse, and the grief belongs to the disciples who will see Him die.
So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy.Jesus names the disciples' present lýpē and ties its end to His seeing them again, so their joy rests on His return to them.
I have deep sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart.Paul uses lýpē for his grief over Israel, a sorrow for living people that he does not hide.
Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation without regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.Paul sets one lýpē against another and judges each by what it works in the one who grieves.
Paul's letter had grieved the church at Corinth over its sin, and he rejoiced that their grief brought them to repentance (2 Corinthians 7:9). That sorrow was over sin, and the church that felt it repented.
The verb lypéō stands in Paul's word to the Thessalonians about believers who had died, "so that you will not grieve like the rest, who are without hope" (1 Thessalonians 4:13). Paul compares two ways of grieving, and he sets the grief of believers beside a hope.
Matthew Henry on Grief for Sin
An English commentator of 1710 reads lýpē in 2 Corinthians 7.
1662 to 1714 · Matthew Henry
Matthew Henry explains what made the Corinthians' sorrow godly in the case Paul had dealt with.
“The offender had great sorrow, he was in danger of being swallowed up with overmuch sorrow; and the society was greatly sorrowful which before was puffed up: and this sorrow of theirs was after a godly manner, or according to God (as it is in the original), that is, it was according to the will of God, tended to the glory of God, and was wrought by the Spirit of God.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible · on 2 Corinthians 7:10Puritan
Mourning Among the Former Things
Revelation 21 sets mourning in the past of God's people.
The Greek noun pénthos, mourning, stands in John's vision of the new heaven and the new earth.
‘He will wipe away every tear from their eyes,’ and there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the former things have passed away.”John's vision names mourning among the former things that pass away when God dwells with His people.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- STEP Bible TBESH and TBESG glosses (Tyndale House, Cambridge, CC BY 4.0), the Greek glosses based on G. Abbott-Smith, A Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament (1922), with the definitions of James Strong, The Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible (1890)
- STEP Bible, Translators Amalgamated Hebrew Old Testament and Greek New Testament, the tagged texts (Tyndale House, Cambridge), CC BY 4.0.
- James Strong, The Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, with its dictionaries of the Hebrew and Greek words (1890), the definition of G2799.
- Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710), on 2 Corinthians 7:10.