Book of Lamentations

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"Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem" by Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn.

The Book of Lamentations (Hebrew מגילת איכה) is a book of the Bible Old Testament and Jewish Tanakh. It is traditionally read by the Jewish people on Tisha B'Av, the fast day that commemorates the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Context

Place in the Canon

Given that the book itself has no formal title in the original scrolls, it is customarily referred to by its first word: Ekhah, which is "an exclamatory particle meaning 'How!'"[1] The Septuagint, following the later Rabbinic usage, adopted the name rendered "Lamentations" (Greek threnoi / Hebrew qinoth, "dirges"), to denote the character of the book, in which the prophet mourns the desolations brought on Jerusalem and the Holy Land by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.E.[2] This name has been retained throughout the various subsequent translations of the text, though some versions mistakenly append the prophet Jeremiah's name to it (a misattribution that is discussed below).

Authorship

According to tradition, authorship is assigned to the Prophet Jeremiah, who was a court official during the conquest of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, and, resultantly was a first-hand witness of the destruction of the First Temple and the capture of King Jehoiachin. Indeed, folk wisdom suggests that Jeremiah retired to a cavern outside the Damascus gate, where he wrote this book. While some scholars agree with this traditional attribution,[3] it has not been borne out by modern scholarship. Likewise, even the suggestion that book is the product of a single author, as argued by Renkema, are in the minority.[4]

The rejection of the traditional attribution is executed on numerous fronts: first (and most commonsensical) is the simple fact that this tradition, despite its evidently venerable history,[5] cannot be dated back to the canonization of the Prophets section of the Hebrew Bible — if it could, this text would have been canonized alongside the Book of Jeremiah.[6] Further, and in spite of certain similarities of tone and style, the two books emerge from considerably variant perspectives:

Jeremiah had condemned the Temple as "a den of robbers" (7:11), while throughout Lamentations, the Temple is the sacred seat of God (e.g., 2:1, 2:6 and passim), with not blot upon its escutcheon. While the prophet was vigorously opposed to any alliance with Egypt, the poet treats the invoking of aid from Egypt favorably, or at least neutrally (5:6). The adulatory references to the King as "the breath of our nostrils, the anointed of God" (4:20), stands in stark contrast to Jeremiah's condemnation of the royal house (chap. 22).[7]

This is not to mention the acrostic style adopted by the poetic author of Lamentations (discussed below), which is a literary flourish that is entirely absent from Jeremiah's output. In fact, sufficient stylistic differences exist within the text to suggest that it is, itself, a redacted volume.[8] When these structural and stylistic facts are coupled with two notable cultural issues (namely, that writing eponymous texts credited to famous authors was a common practice and that a well-established tradition of Mesopotamian "city laments" was already in existence[9]), it seems likely that the problem of authorship will remain insoluble.

Setting

Most commentators see Lamentations as reflecting the period immediately following the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C.E.,[10] though Provan argues for an ahistorical interpretation.[11] Many elements of the lament are borne out in the historical narrative in 2 Kings concerning the fall of Jerusalem: Jerusalem lying in ruins (Lamentations 2:2 and 2 Kings 25:9), enemies entering the city (Lamentations 4:12 and 2 Kings 24:11), people going into exile (Lamentations 1:3 and 2 Kings 24:14) and the sanctuary being plundered (Lamentations 1:10 and 2 Kings 24:13). On the other hand, Babylon is never mentioned in Lamentations, though this could simply be to make the point that the judgment comes from God, and is a consequence of Judah disobeying him.

Date

Lamentations was probably composed soon after 586 B.C.E. Kraus argues that "the whole song stands so near the events that one feels everywhere as if the terrible pictures of the destruction stand still immediately before the eyes of the one lamenting."[12]

Text

Contents

The book consists of five separate poems. In chapter 1 the prophet dwells on the manifold miseries oppressed by which the city sits as a solitary widow weeping sorely. In chapter 2 these miseries are described in connection with the national sins that had caused them. Chapter 3 speaks of hope for the people of God. The chastisement would only be for their good; a better day would dawn for them. Chapter 4 laments the ruin and desolation that had come upon the city and temple, but traces it only to the people's sins. Chapter 5 is a prayer that Zion's reproach may be taken away in the repentance and recovery of the people.

Style

The first four poems (chapters) are acrostics, like some of the Psalms (25, 34, 37, 119), i.e., each verse begins with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet taken in order. The first, second, and fourth have each twenty-two verses, the number of the letters in the Hebrew alphabet. The third has sixty-six verses, in which each three successive verses begin with the same letter. The fifth is not acrostic, but also has twenty-two verses.

Use

Speaking of the "Wailing-place (q.v.) of the Jews" at Jerusalem, a portion of the old wall of the Herod's Temple, Schaff says: "There the Jews assemble every Friday afternoon to bewail the downfall of the holy city, kissing the stone wall and watering it with their tears. They repeat from their well-worn Hebrew Bibles and prayer-books the Lamentations of Jeremiah and suitable Psalms."

Readings, chantings, and choral settings, of the book of Lamentations, are used in the Christian religious service known as the tenebrae (Latin for darkness).

Notes

  1. ↑ Theophile J. Meek, Introduction to and Exgesis of "The Book of Lamentations" in The Interpreter's Bible (Vol. VI), edited by George Arther Buttrick, (New York: Abingdon Press, 1956). 3.
  2. ↑ ibid.
  3. ↑ Such as Wilhelm Rudolph in Die Klaglieder, referenced in Meek, 5; Dobbs-Allsopp, 5 (quoted below).
  4. ↑ Houk summarizes Renkmena's position as follows: "Lamentations is a unified literary creation from the onset, perhaps by one temple singer, but 'elaborated by more than one', a 'collective work of art'. He enumerates many inclusions and responses which link the poems as a synchronic 'product of the guild'. In an earlier work, Renkema (1988: 391) allows for multiple poets contributing to Lamentations but who 'would have done so at the same time, in careful teamwork' (113). See also F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, who argues that "the widely observed unity of form and point of view... and general resemblance in linguistic detail throughout the sequence are broadly suggestive of the work of a single author" (5).
  5. ↑ This history, which can be definitively traced back to the Talmud (and tenatively back as far as the composition of the Book of Chronicles), is summarized in Gordis, 269.
  6. ↑ Meek, 4.
  7. ↑ Gordis, 270.
  8. ↑ Lachs, 47-48; Gordis, 271-272; Meek, 5. However, this perspective is argued against by William Lanahan, who suggests that each of these apparent voices are only personae that were deliberately adopted by the author for literary effect (42).
  9. ↑ However, it should be noted that some authors deny any parallel between the Sumerian and Israelite laments. See, for example, McDaniel, who concludes his paper with the following cogent position: "It seems best to abandon any claim of literary dependence or influence of the Sumerian lamentations on the biblical Lamentations. At most the indebtedness would be the idea of a lamentation over a beloved city. But since there is such a natural corollary to individual and collective lamentations or funeral laments, indebtedness may properly be discarded" (209).
  10. ↑ Childs, Brevard S. Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (London: SCM, 1979), 593.
  11. ↑ Provan, Iain W. "Reading Texts Against an Historical Background: The Case of Lamentations," SJOT 1/1990, 138.
  12. ↑ Cited in Provan, 133.

References
ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

  • Bandstra, Barry L. Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction to the Hebrew Bible (Second Edition). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1999. ISBN 0534527272.
  • Buttrick, George Arthur (Commentary Editor) et al. The Interpreter's Bible: the Holy Scriptures in the King James and Revised standard versions with general articles and introduction, exegesis, exposition for each book of the Bible. New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1951-57.
  • Childs, Brevard S. Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture. Philadelphia, PA: Augsburg Fortress Press, 1979. ISBN 0800605322.
  • Dobbs-Allsopp, F. W. Lamentations. Louisville: John Knox Press, 2002. ISBN 0804231419.
  • Gordis, Robert. "Commentary on the Text of Lamentations." The Jewish Quarterly Review (New Series), Vol. 58, No. 1 (July 1967), 14-33.
  • Houk, Cornelius. "Multiple Poets in Lamentations." Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 30.1 (2005), 111-125.
  • Krašovec, Jože. "The Source of Hope in the Book of Lamentations." Vetus Testamentum Vol. 42, Fasc. 2 (April 1992), 223-233.
  • Lachs, Samuel Tobias. "The Date of Lamentations V." The Jewish Quarterly Review (New Series), Vol. 57, No. 1 (July 1966), 46-56.
  • Lanahan, William F. "The Speaking Voice in the Book of Lamentations." Journal of Biblical Literature Vol. 93, No. 1 (March 1974), 41-49.
  • Landy, Francis. "Lamentations" in The Literary Guide to the Bible. Edited by Robert Alter and Frank Kermode. Cambridge, MS: The Belknap Press of Oxford University Press, 1987. ISBN 0674875303.
  • McDaniel Thomas F. "The Alleged Sumerian Influence upon Lamentations." Vetus Testamentum Vol. 18, Fasc. 2 (April 1968), 198-209.
  • Provan, Iain W. "Reading Texts Against an Historical Background: The Case of Lamentations," Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament 1990 (1), 138.

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