saq

At its plainest, the word names an everyday container: a bag woven from coarse goat-hair cloth, the cheap and durable fabric used to haul grain, food, or supplies. This is the same kind of bag in which Joseph's brothers carried their grain home from Egypt, and the worn-out sacks the Gibeonites loaded onto their donkeys to look like travelers from far away.

The English word "sack" comes from this very root, passing through Greek and Latin, so the everyday sense survives in our own vocabulary. The cloth itself was so rough and humble that the same word came to name the garment of grief and repentance, which is the word's far more common use in the Bible (see the second meaning). Here, though, it simply means the bag.

Far more often, the word names not a bag but a garment made of that same coarse cloth: sackcloth. It was a length of dark, scratchy fabric, often goat hair, worn wrapped around the hips against the bare skin, sometimes in place of normal clothing and sometimes torn over it. Putting it on was a deliberate, visible act. It announced to everyone watching that the wearer had set comfort aside.

People put on sackcloth for three overlapping reasons, and the same garment served all of them. They wore it to mourn the dead, as Jacob did when he believed Joseph was killed. They wore it to humble themselves before God in repentance and urgent prayer, as the city of Nineveh did at Jonah's preaching and as Daniel did when he pleaded for his people. And prophets and whole nations wore it in seasons of disaster and dread, when famine, invasion, or judgment loomed.

These shades blur into one another, because grief, repentance, and dread were felt together: a person in sackcloth was lowering himself, confessing his helplessness, and appealing for mercy all at once. The garment was frequently paired with ashes or dust on the head, with fasting, and with loud weeping, so that the whole body preached the heart's condition.