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LAMENTATIONS, BOOK OF

A sequence of five poems composed some time after the destruction of Jerusalem in 587/586 b.c.e., perhaps for ceremonies commemorating this event. In all likelihood the poems were composed in Palestine, and while the author or authors are unknown, there is no strong reason to suppose that more than one person was responsible for these poems.

Genre

The sequence as a whole exhibits a strong dependence on the city lament, a literary genre best known from ancient Mesopotamia. City laments were originally composed for cultic ceremonies during the razing of old sanctuaries just prior to their restoration. These laments describe the destruction of the city in question and its chief shrines, featuring depictions of the gods’ abandonment of and eventual return to the city, the onslaught of the enemy attack, and the laments uttered by the city’s chief goddess. Lamentations shares with the various Mesopotamian city laments a common subject matter, certain structural affinities, principal character roles, themes, motifs, and even occasional phrasal parallels. That Lamentations is drawing on the same literary genre as these Mesopotamian compositions seems undeniable. Yet it is equally clear that Lamentations is no mere crib of any one particular Mesopotamian city lament. The language, imagery, poetic forms and techniques, theology, and general worldview are thoroughly Israelite in nature. Moreover, city lament imagery can be found throughout the prophetic literature, dating back at least to the 8th century, suggesting that the city lament genre was in fact known in Israel for at least 200 years. The poet has taken this genre and manipulated it to serve his own purposes. The most obvious difference between Lamentations and the Mesopotamian laments lies in Lamentations’ tragic trajectory. Unlike the Mesopotamian city laments, which are ultimately comic in orientation (i.e., the gods do return, the temple is rebuilt, and everyday routines are resumed), Lamentations is basically tragic in orientation. Yahweh is never heard from, and at the sequence’s end the reader is not led to believe that Yahweh’s return or the rebuilding of the temple will happen any time in the near future. Rather, the sequence closes with bitter statements underscoring Yahweh’s continued abandonment.

Lyric and Lyric Structure

Like the Psalms and the Song of Songs, Lamentations is made up of lyrical discourse, and as such it shows no interest in reporting or narrating the events of 587/586 which form its subject matter. Rather, it seeks to explore the complex cluster of emotions — sorrow, anger, guilt, hope, despair, fear, self-loathing, revenge, compassion, forgiveness, uncertainty, disorientation — which these events have evoked in the poet and to subject them to scrutiny, deliberation, and argumentation. Lamentations as lyrical discourse does not foreground story, plot, character development, or attention to setting. Instead it depends almost solely on language and the manipulation of language as its medium of discourse. Image, perspective, and formal patterning are paramount. Parataxis is the norm. Images are piled upon and superimposed over other images in a way not dissimilar to a film montage. The poetry moves from one emotional high point to the next. Conflicting emotions can be held simultaneously and allowed to color each other. For example, in 1:18 Zion’s confession (“Yahweh is in the right, for I have rebelled against his word”) is immediately juxtaposed to a call for the peoples to inspect Zion’s wounds, namely that her young men and women have been forced into captivity. These images evoke conflicting responses which then permeate and modulate one another. Zion’s confession is softened in light of the resulting suffering and exile, and this exile is justified (at least to a point) by Zion’s rebellion. This is the essence of lyric. It does not so much seek to resolve a problem or come cleanly to one final conclusion as to achieve the keenest, most genuine realization of its subject matter. Lamentations as a whole surveys, articulates, and probes the variegated tapestry of emotions provoked by the destruction of Jerusalem.

Each of the poems in Lamentations manifests its own unique lyric integrity. At the same time, they interact as a whole, modulating each other in ways analogous to the play of individual themes or images in a single lyric. Common themes, motifs, vocabulary, voices, and imagery are typically shared among varying subgroups of two or three poems. But cohesion is built into the sequence primarily through formal patterns of repetition, the most notable of which involve the alphabetic acrostic, qinah meter, and enjambed nonparallelistic lines. Each of these dominates in various ways the first four poems in Lamentations. In the concluding poem these dominant patterns are radically reduced. The alphabetic acrostic is no longer used to structure the poem (except perhaps in the number of lines, 22), and most of the individual couplets are predominantly balanced and parallelistic. This dramatic change effectively provides the sequence with a strong sense of closure. This formal closure contrasts dramatically with the thematic openness that is otherwise experienced at the sequence’s end.

Contents

The first two poems are dominated by the personification of the city-temple complex, personified Zion. Lam. 1 opens with a series of 3rd person vignettes depicting Zion after the city’s destruction (1:1-11). Anthropomorphisms predominate. Zion is depicted as widow, princess, and slave (1:1, 3), rejected friend or lover (v. 2), possible rape victim (v. 10), and mother (v. 5). She weeps (v. 2), remembers (v. 7), sins, and groans (v. 8). In the second half of the poem (1:12-22) the perspective shifts to that of Zion herself. Much of the same ground gone over in the first part of the poem is retraced once again, but this time from Zion’s own perspective. This first poem views the destruction of Jerusalem through the person of Zion. The reader sees her own personal loss and ill treatment at the hands of the enemy and even Yahweh. The full range of emotions are explored in this initial poem, but special attention is paid to three themes in particular: Zion’s own responsibility for the destruction and her resultant guilt, the absence of a comforter, and her desire for vengeance.

Lam. 2 also opens with a series of 3rd person vignettes (2:1-8). However, the perspective has shifted. Zion is still present, but the anthropomorphisms associated with her in the first poem have here receded into the background. Zion as the actual city is very much in the foreground. Moreover, Zion is no longer the topical or grammatical subject of the action. Instead, Yahweh as divine warrior takes center stage. Here the poet makes use of two traditional literary and mythopoetic motifs: the day of Yahweh and the portrayal of Yahweh as the divine warrior. Traditionally, Yahweh as the divine warrior would go into battle on his day on behalf of Israel. Victory of course was assured. Here, following in a long prophetic tradition beginning at least with Amos, the poet turns these two traditions on their heads. Yahweh is indeed portrayed as the divine warrior and he does go into battle on the day of his anger, but this time his actions are focused at Judah instead of pursued in Judah’s behalf. Yahweh not only allows the enemy to attack Jerusalem, but he leads the charge and plays the central role in the destruction. Indeed, Yahweh is even depicted as the enemy. This depiction of Yahweh is exploited in at least two ways: it allows the poet to salvage Yahweh’s prestige — Yahweh was not defeated by superior Mesopotamian deities, but was himself the author of the defeat. At the same time, there can be no question that Yahweh is personally responsible for the resultant suffering.

Like Lam. 1, , there is a shift in perspective in the second half of the poem. A dialogue between the narrator and Zion takes up much of this part of the poem — significantly, we do not hear from Yahweh here or anywhere else in Lamentations. The poet cannot find words to describe the catastrophe and urges Zion herself to petition Yahweh on behalf of her community. But instead, Zion challenges the rightness of Yahweh’s actions. She opens her speech in 2:20 with a stinging rhetorical question: “Should women have to eat their own children in order to survive?” The answer is, of course, a resounding no. The implication is that no matter Judah’s guilt, nothing can justify the kind of lifestyles the survivors have been forced into as a result of Yahweh’s actions.

Lam. 3 shifts perspectives once again. This time the voice is that of a male representative of the community who surveys the canvas of suffering in the vocabulary of the individual and communal laments known from the Psalms. By v. 18 the speaker has hit rock bottom. But at this point the speaker begins to reflect on the wisdom tradition which taught, among other things, that if one endured one’s suffering Yahweh would eventually redress the wrongs that were encountered (vv. 25-39). It is this section of Lam. 3 where many scholars have found the only glimmer of hope in the sequence. While the possibility of hope is surely presented by the poet, it ultimately fails to speak to the speaker’s experience. His reflection on hope comes to a climax in vv. 40-41 where he invites his fellow citizens to confess and repent. But then in v. 42 the tenor turns sharply to despair, as if the weight of the persistent suffering suddenly comes crashing in again on the speaker. He confesses, “We have transgressed and rebelled, and you have not forgiven.” The rebuke of the second line ushers reality back in again. The remainder of the poem is plunged into despair. Whatever hope was temporarily embraced by the poet is clearly swallowed up by suffering.

Lam. 4, , like the first two poems in the sequence, opens with 3rd person narrative vignettes. This time the vignettes depict the plight of specific groups representing the community as a whole: children (vv. 1-4), the rich and privileged (vv. 5, 7-8), mothers (v. 10), prophets and priests (vv. 13, 16), elders (v. 16), and even the king (v. 20). The poem closes with imprecations addressed to Edom (vv. 21-22).

Lam. 5 is the only poem which is not constrained by the alphabetic acrostic or the qinah meter. In this stark change in the formal patterns of repetition which otherwise dominate the sequence, the poet effectively announces the sequence’s close. The poem draws heavily on the communal lament tradition known from the Psalms. It is significant that sin and guilt are again acknowledged in this communal voice, but nevertheless the community continues to question the rightness of Yahweh’s actions: “Why have you abandoned us for so long?” “Surely you have rejected us/your anger has burned against us excessively!”

F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

LAMENTATIONS, BOOK OF

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)