For whose honor is the eulogy and the crying for the dead?
(23,2) “And Sarah died in Kiryas Arba, which is Chevron, in the land of Canaan, and Avrohom came to eulogize Sarah and to weep for her.”
Why did the posuk make an interruption between the words “to eulogize” and “to weep for her” with the word “Sarah”, instead of writing "Avrohom came to eulogize and to weep for Sarah"?
But behold, it says in Yirmeyohu 22:10 “don’t cry for the dead” which is astonishing, because we find many times in the Torah that people cried over the death of Tzaddikim! And Chazal taught in the gemora Moed Katan 27b that the first three days of mourning are for crying, so how could Yirmeyohu say not to cry for the dead?
But the gemora in Sanhedrin 46b asks if the eulogy is for the honor of the living or for the honor of the dead, and concludes that it is for the honor of the dead. And it seems to me that this in accordance with the gemora in Moed Katan 25a which teaches that when a Torah sage dies it is an honor for him to tear one’s clothing during his eulogy. The gemora did not say that it is a mitzvah to tear one’s clothing, but that it is an honor for the one who died. From these two gemoras it is clear the eulogy is for the honor of the dead.
But crying for the dead is for the honor of the living. This can be seen from the sefer Tzeidah Laderech’s comments on the posuk in Vayikra 10:6. There, after the death of the two sons of Aharon, Moshe said to Aharon “but your brothers, all the House of Yisrael, shall cry for the burning”. Since it says “your brothers” and not "their brothers" - the brothers of the dead, it implies that the crying is for the honor of the living.
This then is the difference between the eulogy and the crying: the eulogy is for the honor of the dead and the crying is for the honor of the living. This is why Yirmeyohu said “don’t cry for the dead”, because crying is not for the honor of the dead but for the living.
This is why our posuk needed to make an interuption between the eulogy and the crying with the word Sarah, because if it had said "to eulogize and weep for Sarah" it would have implied that that both the eulogy and the crying was for the honor of Sarh, whereas in reality the crying was not for her. Therefore it said “and Avrohom came to eulogize Sarah” - for her honor, “and to weep for her” for the honor of the living.