Lamentations: laments for a fallen city
Lamentations is five poems of grief for Jerusalem, destroyed by Babylon in 586 BC. They pour out sorrow before God without hiding it, and at their centre confess God's mercies, new every morning.
About the book
A lament is a poem of grief. The Hebrew Bible names this book by the word that opens chapters 1, 2 and 4, : ‘How!’, a cry of shock and sorrow: "How lonely lies the city, once so full of people!" (Lamentations 1:1). Jews still read it on the ninth of Av, the day that remembers the temple's destruction.
The book does not name its author. The ancient Greek translation, though, opens with a note that Jeremiah sat weeping and spoke this lament over Jerusalem, and Jewish tradition and the church have long held him its author Talmud, Bava Batra. Chronicles remembers that Jeremiah lamented over King Josiah (2 Chronicles 35:25), and the book's tears, "my eyes flow with tears" (Lamentations 1:16), are much like his. Many scholars, noting that the book names no author and that the five poems differ somewhat in style, think one or more poets left in Judah wrote them after the city fell. Either way, the poems come from eyes that saw the ruin of 586, and the map under the Jesus tab places the book in the exile (586–539 BC).
How it unfolds
Each chapter is one poem. The first mourns Jerusalem, sitting alone like a widow; the second, the Lord's anger that struck her; the third, one man's affliction and his hope; the fourth, the horrors of the siege; the fifth is the people's prayer.
Chapters 1, 2 and 4 have twenty-two verses each, and each verse begins with the next of the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Chapter 3 gives each letter three verses, sixty-six in all (in chapters 2–4 two of the letters trade places); chapter 5 has twenty-two verses but does not follow the alphabet. Such acrostic poems lay grief before God from first to last, A to Z, leaving nothing out, and yet give it order and an end.
Key passages
Jerusalem calls to those who pass by:
Is this nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look around and see! Is there any sorrow like mine, which was inflicted on me, which the LORD made me suffer on the day of His fierce anger?
Lamentations 1:12
The book does not hide that the fall was judgement ("Jerusalem has sinned greatly", Lamentations 1:8), nor does it hide the pain. Yet in the depths, in the middle poem of the five, hope rises:
Yet I call this to mind, and therefore I have hope: Because of the loving devotion of the LORD we are not consumed, for His mercies never fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness!
Lamentations 3:21-23
Matthew Henry writes, "God's compassions fail not; of this we have fresh instances every morning" Matthew Henry. The book ends with a prayer, "Restore us to Yourself, O LORD, so we may return" (Lamentations 5:21). Not everything is resolved, but the people are still speaking to God.
The book and Christ
The church has long heard Christ's passion in 1:12, and the Western church has read this book in its services of Holy Week. Matthew Henry writes on that verse, "Whatever may be learned from the sufferings of Jerusalem, far more may be learned from the sufferings of Christ" Matthew Henry. Jesus wept over Jerusalem and foresaw that its enemies "will not leave one stone on another" (Luke 19:44). Then he "suffered outside the city gate, to sanctify the people by His own blood" (Hebrews 13:12).
"For the Lord will not cast us off forever" (Lamentations 3:31): Christians hear that confession answered most deeply in Christ's resurrection. Lamentations teaches that grief brought honestly to God is the language of faith in loss; Through temptation and trouble, in the New Believers course, says the same.
Reading it
Read one poem a day for five days, beginning with Lamentations 1; on the third day read chapter 3, verses 19–33, slowly. Reading Jeremiah 52 first shows what was lost. Then go on to Ezekiel.
Practice
- Practice 1 of 5
How are the verses of Lamentations 1, 2 and 4 made?
- Practice 2 of 5
In Lamentations 3, what is new every morning?
- Practice 3 of 5
What is true of the authorship of Lamentations?
- Practice 4 of 5
How does Lamentations end?
- Practice 5 of 5
What did Jesus do when he drew near Jerusalem and saw the city?
Reading to the end marks it read; tap to switch it.
Related topics
Source
- The Babylonian Talmud, Bava Batra 14b–15a — Completed c. 6th century. The Jewish tradition of who wrote (or compiled) each book of the Hebrew Bible: Moses his own book, the portion of Balaam and Job; Joshua his and the Torah's last eight verses (his death recorded by Eleazar and Phinehas); Samuel his, Judges and Ruth (finished by Gad and Nathan); David the Psalms with the elders; Jeremiah his, Kings and Lamentations; Hezekiah and his company Isaiah, Proverbs, the Song and Ecclesiastes; the Men of the Great Assembly Ezekiel, the Twelve, Daniel and Esther; Ezra his and the genealogies of Chronicles.
Lessons from the Bible, the church's creeds and classic commentary. Each book's author and date are given as the church has received them, and scholars who see them otherwise are presented fairly. Scripture quotations: BSB.