loud, public wailing: the formal outcry of grief, with beating of the breast, that mourns a death or a disaster
The word (misped) is not private sadness but the loud, public ceremony of grief. It names the scene of wailing and beating the breast that gathered around a death: the cries, the tears, and often the hired mourners whose task was to make the loss heard. When Genesis reports a "great and very grievous mourning" for Jacob, this is the word for that outcry.
The same word stretches from the graveside to the whole community. Prophets summon it over cities and nations facing ruin, picturing the coming disaster as a death to be wailed over, and it can also be the sound of a people turning back to God in sorrow, joined to fasting and weeping. So it covers a wide range of occasions:
- the loud lament over someone who has died, as in the mourning for Jacob
- the wailing raised over a doomed city or nation, as when the prophets cry over the ruin ahead
- the public grief of repentance, joined to fasting and weeping
It sits close to several other grief words. It is the loud act itself, distinct from אֵבֶל, the mourning state a person keeps by wearing sackcloth and observing the mourning days; from קִינָה, the composed funeral song with set words, like David's lament for Saul; and from נְהִי, the bare wail or howl. Its own verb is ספד, "to wail and beat the breast."