extreme repentance or grief
—After lying to the people, the mayor’s only hope for staying in office is to come out in sackcloth and ashes and give a full, heartfelt apology.

In biblical times, a person outwardly showed his sadness or shame by wearing clothing made from sackcloth—the rough material used for making sacks—and by pouring ashes on himself. One example of this comes in the book of Esther, which tells about some Jews living in Persia.

The king of Persia selected the Jewish Esther to be his queen, though he did not know she was a Jew. When Esther’s cousin, Mordecai, refused to kneel down before Haman, a high official in the government, Haman became angry. In order to get rid of Mordecai, Haman convinced the king to sign a decree calling on the people of Persia to kill the Jews on a certain day.

Now when Mordecai became aware of all that had been done, he tore his garments and put on sackcloth and ashes. He went out into the city, crying out in a loud and bitter voice. But he went no further than the king’s gate, for no one was permitted to enter the king’s gate clothed in sackcloth. Throughout each and every province where the king’s edict and law were announced there was considerable mourning among the Jews, along with fasting, weeping, and sorrow. Sackcloth and ashes were characteristic of many. (Esther 4:1-3)

In the end, Esther appealed to the king, who decided to honor Mordecai and execute Haman. Then he sent out a new decree that allowed the Jews to defend themselves against those who wanted to kill them. Thus, with the help of the king’s officials, the Jews fought their enemies and defeated them.

to share one’s deep feelings, thoughts, or emotions
—I poured my heart out to my son, telling him how sorry I was for all the ways I’d hurt him.

In Lamentations, the prophet Jeremiah mourns the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple. Because of his sadness, Jeremiah is sometimes called “the weeping prophet.” For example, he writes,

My eyes are worn out from weeping;

my stomach is in knots.

My heart is poured out on the ground

due to the destruction of my helpless people;

children and infants faint

in the town squares. (Lamentations 2:11)

Jeremiah’s style of writing has given us the word jeremiad, meaning “a long tirade or sorrowful complaint.” But despite his sadness, Jeremiah also shows his trust in God and tells the people to pray earnestly to the Lord for help:

Get up! Cry out in the night

when the night watches start!

Pour out your heart like water [pour out thine heart like water]

before the face of the Lord!

Lift up your hands to him

for your children’s lives;

they are fainting

at every street corner. (Lamentations 2:19)

to defend or help those in need
—I’m worried about the children who lost their parents in the war. Who will stand in the gap for them?

The Lord told Ezekiel that the leaders of the Israelites in Jerusalem were corrupt and that their prophets spoke lies. He compared the people’s spiritual condition to a city whose surrounding wall had been broken down, leaving those inside without defense against the enemy. The Lord looked for a prophet in Jerusalem to begin repairing that spiritual wall, stand where the wall was still broken, and warn the people about the coming destruction, but there was no one who would obey him:

I looked for a man from among them who would repair the wall and stand in the gap before me on behalf of the land, so that I would not destroy it, but I found no one. So I have poured my anger on them, and destroyed them with the fire of my fury. I hereby repay them for what they have done, declares the sovereign Lord. (Ezekiel 22:30,31)

Finally, during the third attack of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, the city and the temple were destroyed.

to be irritated by a situation; to be unnerved by something
—His refusal to help me really set my teeth on edge.

During the time of the prophet Ezekiel, a popular proverb among the Jewish people was “The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” To have one’s teeth set on edge is the feeling a person gets in his mouth after eating something extremely sour. The words for set on edge in the original Hebrew can also be translated as made blunt or made dull. When the people of Israel used this phrase, they were complaining that God was punishing them for the bad things their ancestors had done.

God told Ezekiel that in the future, the people would recognize his clear justice, when those who did wrong would be punished, and their punishment would not extend to their descendants:

The word of the Lord came to me: “What do you mean by quoting this proverb concerning the land of Israel,

“‘The fathers eat sour grapes

And the children’s teeth become numb [teeth are set on edge]?’

“As surely as I live, declares the sovereign Lord, you will not quote this proverb in Israel anymore! Indeed! All lives are mine—the life of the father as well as the life of the son is mine. The one who sins will die.” (Ezekiel 18:1-3)

occasionally
—I think that eating ice cream is bad for my health, but I do enjoy eating a small bowl of it from time to time.

One of the Israelites taken captive by the Babylonian army when it conquered Judah was the prophet Ezekiel. While in Babylon, God told him to draw a picture of Jerusalem on a clay brick and then act as if he were an enemy surrounding and attacking the city. This was to represent the coming destruction of Jerusalem. God then instructed him to lie on his left side, tied down, for 390 days, symbolically “bearing” Israel’s 390 years of sin. After that, he was to lie on his right side for 40 days, because of Judah’s 40 sinful years. And since there would be a famine during the siege, God commanded him to show this by eating only a small amount of food each day he lay on his side:

As for you, take wheat, barley, beans, lentils, millet, and spelt, put them in a single container, and make food from them for yourself. For the same number of days that you lie on your side—390 days—you will eat it. The food you eat will be eight ounces a day by weight; you must eat it at fixed times [from time to time]. And you must drink water by measure, a pint and a half; you must drink it at fixed times. (Ezekiel 4:9-11)

Here, from time to time means “at scheduled times,” while today it means “occasionally.”

a place with people who are unfriendly or hostile toward someone who must enter

—Last week our company’s stocks lost 30% of their value. Now I have to go into the lion’s den and face the board of directors.

King Darius gave Daniel great authority in the kingdom of Babylon. This made some of the other Babylonian officials jealous, and they made plans to trap him. They convinced the king to make a new law, saying that for 30 days anyone who prayed to a god or man other than the king would be thrown into a pit of lions. Daniel continued to pray to the God of Israel three times a day, and even though the king did not want Daniel punished, he was bound by the law and Daniel was sealed into the lions’ den.

In the morning, at the earliest sign of daylight, the king got up and rushed to the lions’ den [den of lions]. As he approached the den, he called out to Daniel in a worried voice, “Daniel, servant of the living God, was your God whom you continually serve able to rescue you from the lions?”

Then Daniel spoke to the king, “O king, live forever! My God sent his angel and closed the lions’ mouths so that they have not harmed me, because I was found to be innocent before him. Nor have I done any harm to you, O king.”

Then the king was delighted and gave an order to haul Daniel up from the den. So Daniel was hauled up out of the den. He had no injury of any kind, because he had trusted in his God. (Daniel 6:19-23)

The phrase Daniel in the lions’ den can be used to represent someone who enters a place of opposition and stands up for his beliefs.

a clear indication of future trouble
—When the national economy began to have problems, Julie saw the handwriting on the wall and decided not to ask for a raise.

After the death of King Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar ruled over Babylon. He held a banquet and wanted his guests to drink from the golden cups that Nebuchadnezzar had taken from the temple in Jerusalem when he conquered Judah. He ordered his servants to bring them to him.

So they brought the gold and silver vessels that had been confiscated from the temple, the house of God in Jerusalem, and the king and his nobles, together with his wives and concubines, drank from them. As they drank wine, they praised the gods of gold and silver, bronze, iron, wood, and stone.

At that very moment the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the royal palace wall, opposite the lampstand. The king was watching the back of the hand that was writing. Then all the color drained from the king’s face and he became alarmed. The joints of his hips gave way, and his knees began knocking together. (Daniel 5:3-6)

When none of the king’s wise men could interpret the “handwriting on the wall,” the king’s wife told him to call the Israelite Daniel, who had been taken captive from Israel. Daniel told the king what the writing said—“mene, mene, teqel, pharsin”—as well as its meaning. Each of these Aramaic words represents a unit of money, and they also sound like words meaning (in order) “numbered,” “weighed,” and “divided.” Daniel gave this interpretation:

As for mene—God has numbered your kingdom’s days and brought it to an end. As for teqel—you are weighed on the balances and found to be lacking. As for peres—your kingdom is divided and given over to the Medes and Persians. (Daniel 5:26-28)

The king rewarded Daniel by making him the third-highest ruler in Babylon, but their new relationship didn’t last long. The same night he received the message, Belshazzar was killed. Darius the Mede then took over the throne, and Babylon became part of the Persian Empire.

a flaw or weakness in a highly respected person
—When Mrs. Lin was caught stealing, we found out that one more of our leaders had feet of clay.

One of the enemies of the Israelites was Babylon. The Babylonians attacked Judah three times, each time taking captives back to their own country. One of the Jewish captives taken to Babylon was Daniel, to whom God gave the ability to interpret dreams. Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian king, had a dream, and he demanded that someone tell him what it meant, even without the king sharing what the dream had been. No one could do this except for Daniel, who said,

You, O king, were watching as a great statue—one of impressive size and extraordinary brightness—was standing before you. Its appearance caused alarm. As for that statue, its head was of fine gold, its chest and arms were of silver, its belly and thighs were of bronze. Its legs were of iron; its feet were partly of iron and partly of clay [feet part of iron and part of clay]. You were watching as a stone was cut out, but not by human hands. It struck the statue on its iron and clay feet [feet that were of iron and clay], breaking them in pieces. Then the iron, clay, bronze, silver, and gold were broken in pieces without distinction and became like chaff from the summer threshing floors that the wind carries away. Not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that struck the statue became a large mountain that filled the entire earth. (Daniel 2:31-35)

The statue in the king’s dream represented a succession of kingdoms, with the feet of iron and clay being a final divided kingdom, which would ultimately be destroyed by another, greater kingdom established by God.In modern usage, the meaning of feet of clay has shifted from “a weak kingdom” to “a weakness in a person who was previously held in high esteem.”

Today, the word Babylon can be used to mean “a place of great luxury, often with corruption and immorality.”

I am suffering
—Woe is me! I don’t think I’ll ever win at that game.

In the Book of Jeremiah, the longest book in the Bible, the prophet Jeremiah tells of his sorrow for the sins of the people of Judah and for the coming punishment. He said that the army of Babylon was going to drive the people from their land and that the Babylonians would destroy Jerusalem.

And I cried out, “We are doomed! (Woe is me)

Our wound is severe!

We once thought, ‘This is only an illness.

And we will be able to bear it!’ But our tents have been destroyed.

The ropes that held them in place have been ripped apart.

Our children are gone and are not coming back.

There is no survivor to put our tents back up,

no one left to hang their tent curtains in place.

Woe is an expression meaning sadness or trouble. Today, woe is me is most often used in an overly dramatic way rather than to express true sorrow.

a person cannot change his basic, true nature
—I don’t know why I expect my Tammy to stop lying. A leopard can’t change its spots.

Jeremiah, a prophet to the Israelites, told the people God’s view of how bad their disobedience had become:

But there is little hope for you ever doing good,

you who are so accustomed to doing evil.

Can an Ethiopian change the color of his skin?

Can a leopard remove its spots? [Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?] (Jeremiah 13:23)

The implied answer to the question in this verse is “No,” and the meaning of the verse is this: The Ethiopian and the leopard cannot change how they look, and the evil people of Israel have made sin such a habit that they are in danger of not being able to do good.