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Observations on Various Passages of Scripture
Observations on Various Passages of Scripture Author:Adam Clarke, Thomas Harmer Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: thou shalt not weep with bitter sobbings ; thou shaltnot even suffer tears at all to appear. On the contrary, be silent, and assume none of the common forms of m... more »ourning : put on thy turban as usual; thy shoes on thy feet; muffle not up the lower part of thy face ; and eat not the bread of consolation, wont to be prepared by the humane, and sent to those in deep af fliction. OBSERVATION VI. The Head sometimes shaved in Mourning for the Dead. Not only common readers, but even the learned themselves appear to be perplexed about the meaning of that prohibition of the law of Moses, contained in the latter part of the first verse of the 14th of Deuteronomy, Yc shall not cut yourself, nor make any baldness between your eyes for the dead; but it seems to be clearly explained by a passage of Sir John Chardin, as to its expressing sorrow, though it is probable the idolatrousness of the of the practice may, at this distance of time, be irrecoverably lost. Sir John tells us, "that black hair is most esteemed among the Persians, as well on the head, as on the eye-brows, and in the beard. That the largest and thickest eye-brows are the most beautiful, especially when they are of such a size as to touch one another. The fjn. i. p. 53, 51. Arab women have the most beautiful eye-brows of this sort. The Persian women, when they have them not of this colour, tinge them, and rub them with black, to make them the larger. They also make, in the lower part of" the fore-head, a little below the eye-brows, a black spot, in form of a lozenge, not quite so large as the nail of the little finger." This is probably not of a lasting nature, but quickly wears off. These notions of beauty differ very much from those of the ladies of Eurtpe. None of them, I think, are fond of having their e...« less