Often attributed to the prophet Jeremiah, the Book of Lamentations certainly occurred in the events of his time period, and encompass all the tragedy he prophesized. It’s a long litany and whine about everything we lost when God facilitated the destruction of the Jerusalem in 586 BCE. “The tone is bleak: God does not speak, the degree of suffering is presented as overwhelming, and expectations of future redemption are minimal. Nonetheless, the author repeatedly makes clear that the city, and even the author himself, have profusely sinned against God, justifying God’s wrath. In doing so, the author does not blame God but rather presents God as righteous, just, and sometimes even merciful.” The book is written in poetic verse… a story to be sung by bards! Do we have Jewish bards?
- The lament opens with a description of Jerusalem, sitting alone like an abandoned woman on a hill. The author, too, feels abandoned, but recognizes that he and his fellow citizens sinned gravely against God, and since God must know what he’s doing, they probably deserved it. Still, the author feels betrayed by both friend and enemy alike. But… hey, if you think it was God’s will, then they were just doing what they were destined to do.
- Although the speaker spends most of this section outraged that God would have destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple, he acknowledges that God spend generations warning the Jews that if they didn’t get back on the true path he would do so. And, he professes shame on the part of the people for not having done so. There is an interesting linguistic note in here that many biblical scholars have looked at – the Temple is referred to by a Hebrew term that indicates a “temporary shelter”, something like a sukkah, or a field hut during the harvest, indicating that God knew all along that it would not last.
- One thing I forgot to note at the start of Lamentations is that the poetry is written, each chapter, as an “acrostic” – each stanza stars with each succeeding letter of the Hebrew alphabet – Aleph, Bet, Gimel… etc. Here on page three, each letter gets three mini-paragraphs, making it quite long. Back to the meat of the matter – the poet takes this on personally, lamenting that he, himself, has been the target of God’s wrath and retribution. He acknowledges his own sins, but cries out to God for reasons and relief. It sounds a lot like the speeches of Job, just a couple of weeks ago.
- The poet waxes morosely about how deep into the world of sin he and the people of Jerusalem had gone. Even worse than the biblical Sodom and Gomorrah, he opines, because by this point, having that story, and the story of The Flood, and others, the Jewish people should know better. And yet, they still strayed from God’s path. And, at the same time, rather than destroy them as in the past, God has destroyed their homeland and sent them into exile, leaving the possibility of redemption open.
- Lamentations ends with a cry out to God, reminding him that the poet’s generation is not the generation that sinned, but rather the descendants of them. He enumerates the generations of servitude, destitution, and scrabbling to return to the righteous path. And, he asserts, the people have done so, and pleads with God to restore them to grace.