Don’t tell it in Gath. Don’t weep at all. At Beth Ophrah I have rolled myself in the dust.
ExplanationCommentary
Verse 10. Geth. Amongst the Philistines, lest they rejoice at your calamity. Challoner. 2 Kennicott. 1:20. Amos 3:9. Calmet.—Tell not these calamities, which I foresee, among your enemies, lest they rejoice. But lament in your own houses, which shall be filled with dust. S. Jerom prays for the light of the Holy Ghost to understand this passage. Worthington.—Weep ye not. Keep in your tears, that you may not give your enemies an occasion of exulting over you: but in your own houses, or in your house of dust, your earthly habitation, sprinkle yourselves with dust, and put on the habit of penitents. Some take the house of dust (in Hebrew Haphra) to be the proper name of a city. Challoner.—With tears. Hebrew “at all,” (Prot. Bible.) “in Acco,” or Ptolemais, (Reland) or Bochim, ( Bible.) a place near Jerusalem. Judges 2:1. But no reference to this place, or to “the Enakim,” (who appear in some copies of the Sept.) seems to be made.—Of dust. Samaria. verse 6. Calmet.
Beth Ophrah means literally “House of Dust.”