And he took him a potsherd to scrape himself withal; and he sat down among the ashes.
A potsherd - not a piece of a broken earthen vessel, but an instrument made for scratching (the root of the Hebrew word is scratch); the sore was too disgusting to touch. 'To sit in the ashes' marks the deepest mourning (Jonah 3:6); also humility, as if the mourner were nothing but dust and ashes; so Abraham (Genesis 18:27).