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Bible Dictionaries
Bier
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or BIER.—The Gr. word σορός (Heb. סִמָה, 2 Samuel 3:31), ‘bier,’ more strictly means ‘a coffin.’ Luke 7:14 is the only place where the word appears in the NT. The bier was an open coffin, or simply a flat wooden frame on which the body of the dead was carried to the grave. Closed coffins were not used in the time of our Lord. According to the Levitical Law, contact with a dead body was forbidden as a source of defilement (Numbers 19:11-14). In raising to life the widow’s son at Nain, Jesus, by touching the bier only, avoided any infringement of the letter of the Law. But the miracle, prompted by that same intense sympathy with human sorrow which He so strikingly manifested on another occasion (John 11:35), pointed to a higher and more authoritative law—that Divine eternal law of compassion which received its freest and fullest expression for the first time in His own life, and which forms one of the most distinctive features of His Gospel.
Dugald Clark.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Bier'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/b/bier.html. 1906-1918.
