forty days: We learn from the Greek historians, that the time of mourning was while the body remained with the embalmers, which Herodotus says was seventy days. During this time the body lay in nitre, the use of which was to dry up all its superfluous and noxious moisture, and when, in the space of 30 days, this was sufficiently effected, the remaining forty, the time mentioned by Diodorus, were employed in anointing it with gums and spices to preserve it, which was properly the embalming. This sufficiently explains the phraseology of the text. mourned: Heb. wept threescore: Num 20:29, Deu 21:13, Deu 34:8 Reciprocal: Gen 27:41 - The days Gen 50:26 - they embalmed Ecc 12:5 - the mourners