What Is Behind the Custom?

DURING burial ceremonies in various parts of the earth it is customary ritual to cast one or three shovelsful of soil into the grave into which the casket has been lowered. What is behind this custom?

A ten-volume German work on superstition, Handwőrterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens, explains that this is done for various reasons​—“that one may more easily forget the dead person in order to further the rest of the dead person, that the deceased may experience less boredom; in Bulgaria, that the relatives thereby ransom the soul. The soul leaves the corpse when the priest tosses a handful of soil into the grave.” (Vol. I, p. 984) Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend comments on the funeral ceremonies of certain North American Indians who threw items into the grave to pacify the “ghost of the deceased.” Then this work adds: “The same idea was probably back of the widespread custom of casting soil, clay, dust, or ashes into the grave.”​—Vol. I, pp. 427, 428.

The custom of throwing soil into the grave has no Scriptural basis. The Bible states regarding the dead: “Their love and their hate and their jealousy have already perished, and they have no portion anymore to time indefinite in anything that has to be done under the sun.” (Eccl. 9:6) So ceremonies to pacify the spirits of the dead are of no value. The dead are really dead, awaiting restoration to life in God’s due time. The Scriptures assure us: “There is going to be a resurrection of both the righteous and the unrighteous.”​—Acts 24:15.