A. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
The terrifying calamity that befell the land of Judah and the city of Jerusalem in 587-586 B.C. forms the backdrop for this little book. The Babylonian army under Nebuchadnezzar had laid siege to Jerusalem for eighteen long months. When the famine-stricken and disease-ridden city was finally taken, it was totally demolished and put to the torch. It was a tragic and heartbreaking occasion for the Jewish people. The security of Jerusalem had been held as a precious doctrine by the inhabitants of the city ever since the time of Isaiah (701 B.C.). Now those who lived to see the city lying in ruins and the Temple leveled to the ground could scarcely believe their eyes. Their grief knew no bounds. In the months and years that followed, their minds were plagued with many unanswered questions about their past history and their future destiny.
These five poems came out of the excruciating pain of those trouble-filled days that followed the destruction of the city, the capture of King Zedekiah, and the deportation of the people to Babylon. “The torrent of emotion” that flows through the book reveals the depths of despondency to which the people had fallen. These poems are an outpouring of all the grief and suffering that was pent up in their hearts. It is now poured out in a description of their evil plight mingled with a confession of their sin and accompanied with anguished cries of penitence. Their grief was really too deep for words, but an inner compulsion drove them to express their sorrow in some form. As with people in all ages, poetry and song were the most natural way to give vent to their emotions.
B. TITLE AND PLACE IN THE CANON
In the Hebrew text the book has no title, but like the books of the Pentateuch, it was long known by its first word, “How!” ' ekah (also first word of cc. 2 and 4). However, somewhere through the centuries the Rabbis began to refer to it as “lamentations” or “dirges” (Qinoth), and it is listed under that name in the Babylonian Talmud. The translators of the Septuagint, Greek version of the Old Testament, followed the Rabbis by using the Greek term for lamentations, Threnoi. They went a step further and ascribed the book to Jeremiah. Consequently the later Greek versions, the Syraic, the old Latin, Jerome's Vulgate, and the English versions have given it the longer title, “The Lamentations of Jeremiah.”
In the Hebrew Bible today Lamentations is not found among The Prophets, but is listed in The Writings (Hagiographa). It is one of the Five Rolls (Megilloth) in that section (the third) of the Hebrew Scriptures. That it was not always listed there is especially evident from the Septuagint and the writings of Josephus. The Septuagint consistently placed Lamentations with the prophecy of Jeremiah. In a comment on the number and nature of the Holy Scriptures,1 Josephus does the same. Speaking of the books of the Old Testament, Josephus states that their number is twenty-two, and divides them into three groups, giving the number that belonged to each group. While he does not mention Lamentations by name, to arrive at the number twenty-two he had to count Lamentations with Jeremiah and Ruth with the Book of Judges. He apparently followed the Septuagint in putting Lamentations among The Prophets and not in The Writings.
Melito, bishop of Sardis (A.D. 180) likewise reckoned the number of books at twenty-two, and he was followed in this by Origen (A.D. 250), Augustine (A.D. 420), and Jerome (A.D. 405). This would mean that all these men thought of Lamentations as belonging with The Prophets and not in the Hagiographa. Jerome, however, mentions that “some would include Ruth and Lamentations in the Hagiographa and by adding these compute the number of books as twenty-four, etc.”2 He may have been referring to II Esdras and the Talmud, which follow the twenty-four numbering and place Lamentations in The Writings. It is apparent from the foregoing that during the intertestamental period and first centuries of the Christian Church no official order of the books of Scripture had been established. The Book of Lamentations in one catalogue was found in The Writings and in another among The Prophets. Our English Bibles follow the arrangement found in the Septuagint and list Lamentations with Jeremiah.
C. AUTHORSHIP AND DATE
No one is named as the author of Lamentations in the Hebrew text. But a long line of tradition affirms that Jeremiah composed the book. That the book is written in the spirit of Jeremiah, and has many similarities to his prophecy, cannot be denied. The Septuagint, however, is the earliest written source that ascribes the poems to Jeremiah. Although II Chron. 35:25 has often been quoted as a biblical reference to the authorship of Jeremiah for Lamentations, this passage merely states that Jeremiah wrote a lament on the death of king Josiah that was known to the Temple singers of a later day. It does connect Jeremiah with the lamentation type of literature, but this only corroborates what we already know from the prophet's own book. There is no certainty that this passage refers to the Book of Lamentations, for the Temple choir must have had many songs of lamentation in its repertoire.
The Septuagint is quite explicit in its view of the authorship. This Greek version of the book carries an introductory note (apparently based on a Hebrew original) that clearly attributes the book to Jeremiah. It reads: “And it came to pass after Israel was carried away captive and Jerusalem was made desolate that Jeremiah sat weeping, and he lamented with this lamentation over Jerusalem, and he said”—then follows the first verse of the Hebrew text. The Vulgate carries this introductory note with a slight variation; the Arabic reproduces it exactly; and the Targum (paraphrase of) Jonathan replaces it with this line: “Jeremiah the prophet and chief priest said.” These authorities are followed by the Talmud and the Church Fathers in assuming that Jeremiah was the author. For centuries Jeremiah's authorship was never questioned.
Today, however, many outstanding scholars reject the Jeremianic authorship. They do so on the basis of structure, diction, and the attitude toward the destruction of Jerusalem assumed by the writer. They claim that the acrostic form with its preciseness, the presence of many new terms and phrases not found in Jeremiah's prophecy, the bewildered attitude of the writer over the destruction of Jerusalem, is alien to Jeremiah. These scholars can tabulate an impressive array of differences from the prophecy, and are quite confident that the poems do not come from the pen of Jeremiah.
On the other hand, scholars just as well qualified to render an opinion strongly favor the traditional view. They base their findings on the similarities that exist between the two books. The view that punishment had come to Israel because of the nation's persistent sinning and its reliance on weak and treacherous allies is common to both books. The same attitude toward false prophets and priests characterizes the two volumes. Similar words and phrases point to a common author. The anguish and tears of the writer of Lamentations reflect vividly the personality of Jeremiah. The detailed description of the city's ruin argues well for Jeremiah's authorship. We know that he was present when the city fell and remained behind to look upon its desolate wastes. Thus the affinity in content, spirit, tone, and language, all speak strongly for Jeremiah.
The date of the two books, generally speaking, is the same. The closing events recorded in the Book of Jeremiah would fall close to 580 B.C. and there is nothing in the Book of Lamentations that would require a later date.
D. STRUCTURE
Of the five poems that make up the book, the first four are dirges, while the fifth is more in the form of a prayer. In the Hebrew, the first four poems are alphabetic acrostics. Poems one, two, and four each have twenty-two verses, corresponding in number and order to the Hebrew alphabet. Verses in poems one and two have three lines each with only the first line following the acrostic form. Poem four is the same except it has only two lines to the verse. Poem three is still more unusual in that all the letters of the alphabet are repeated three times in succession. Because of this the Masoretes thought of each line as a verse and divided the poem into sixty-six verses. The fifth poem has twenty-two verses of one line, but no acrostic arrangement is evident.
It is not known just why the author chose to use the acrostic form. Although it is artistic and well-suited to express the grief of a sorrowing nation, it does restrain and hamper the free movement of thought. Kuist has suggested that it may have been used as a mnemonic device to aid the memory, or to keep the explosive emotional element under careful control, or to give “a sense of continuity and completeness to the communal expressions of grief and guilt and striving for hope which these elegies encouraged.”3
It should be noted, however, that the acrostic was a familiar literary device4 in biblical times and that the author took his freedom at certain points. In poems two, three, and four the letters ayin and pe of the Hebrew alphabet are transposed, and verse 7 of poem one and verse 19 of poem two have four lines instead of three.
The metrical structure used here is known as the Qina rhythm. It is the metre most commonly used for chanting dirges over the dead or over national calamities in ancient times. Its use of parallelism, repetition, apostrophe, and its play on words were admirably suited to communicate the unfathomable depths of suffering and sorrow that the human soul is capable of experiencing.
E. PURPOSE AND USAGE
These poems are dirges composed with the expectation that they would be recited by the congregation of Israel to express their great sorrow over the loss of their national identity. They contemplate all the great subjects of public grief. Their purpose is to express therapeutically the deepest and most profound emotions of a broken and ruined people. The poems enabled the people to confess that God had dealt with them justly, and in so doing to find strength to bear an unutterable burden of woe without despair. They were intended to help the people learn a lesson from the past and at the same time to retain faith in God even when confronted with overwhelming disaster. Opening the doors of prayer, they pointed the way to repentance and faith, and thus aroused hope in the mercy of God.
That the Jewish people have recognized the value of these poems is seen in their usage. Lamentations is included in the Five Rolls which are read on important anniversary days every year in Judaism. Our little book is read on the ninth of Ab (near the end of July), a fast day that is observed in the commemoration of the destruction of the first and second Temples. The Roman church uses passages from Lamentations for the last three days of Holy Week. Passages from the book are also included in certain Protestant liturgies. Its use in the synagogue and in the church through the centuries is an abiding testimony to its influence on the religious life of the world, and may well show why the canonicity of Lamentations has never been questioned.