SOURCE: Guthrie, Harvey H., Jr. “Lamentations.” In The Interpreter's One-Volume Commentary on the Bible: Introduction and Commentary for Each Book of the Bible Including the Apocrypha, edited by Charles M. Laymon, pp. 405-10. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1971.

[In the following essay, Guthrie provides a thematic and stylistic examination of the five poems that comprise the Book of Lamentations.]

INTRODUCTION

NAME AND PLACE IN CANON.

In the Hebrew Bible the book of Lamentations takes its name from its opening word, How, the characteristic beginning of a funeral dirge. The Talmud and rabbinic tradition designate it “Lamentations,” and this title is employed in the LXX, Latin, and English. In the Hebrew canon Lam. is included in the Writings as one of the 5 Scrolls and is read in the synagogue on the 9th of Ab (Jul.-Aug.), the day on which the destruction of the temple in a.d. 70 is bewailed. The LXX is responsible for Lam.'s position after Jer. in the Christian canon. The rationale for this move was provided by the tradition of Jeremianic authorship (see below).

FORM.

The book consists of 5 poems, each of which constitutes a ch[apter]. The first 4 are acrostics, whose 22 short stanzas begin successively with the letters of the Hebrew alphabet in order—except that in ch. 3 each couplet within a stanza begins with that stanza's letter, and in chs. 2-4 for some unknown reason the order of the letters ayin and pe is reversed. Although ch. 5 is not an acrostic, it conforms to the pattern by consisting of 22 couplets. The purpose of the acrostic form may be to provide a memory aid as well as to achieve completeness by running the course of the entire alphabet.

The poems employ literary forms known elsewhere in the OT as well as in the ancient Near Eastern culture of which Israel was a part. Chs. 1; 2; 4 are basically funeral dirges. Ch. 3 is an individual lament, combined with expressions of thanksgiving and trust. Ch. 5 is a communal lament.

ORIGIN.

The poems all address themselves to what happened to Jerusalem and Judah in the Babylonian invasions of the early 6th cent. b.c. A misreading of II Chr. 35:25 and the LXX preface to Lam. are the basis of the very ancient tradition that the author of the poems was Jeremiah. There is no concrete evidence for the validity of this tradition, and the Hebrew canon (see above) does not associate the book with the prophet.

The consensus of scholarly opinion is that the poems originated in Palestine itself among those remaining after Jerusalem's fall in 586 b.c. Some have held chs. 3; 5 to be much later than the other poems, but the present tendency is to doubt this. Indeed, the order of the poems may reflect the order of their composition, ch. 1 possibly originating after the first Babylonian siege of 597 and ch. 5 at a time somewhat removed from the disaster of 586. The poems may very well come from one author, although there is no way of knowing. They certainly were written on different occasions. Some have opined that they had a cultic usage at an annual day of mourning over the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple (cf. II Kings 25:8; Jer. 52:12; Zech. 7:3-5; 8:18).

SIGNIFICANCE.

Lam. is an eloquent statement of Israel's response to her downfall. Into this response has been taken up the prophetic insistence that the purpose of God is the ultimate source of meaning for that disaster just as it was for Israel's origins. Ch. 3 explicitly seeks to invest catastrophe with meaning, and prefigures the servant songs in Isa. 40-55. Thus the book has had significance for Christians as well as Jews, and is traditionally used in many churches during Holy Week. …

I. A LONELY CITY (1:1-22)

Hermann Gunkel, whose work on Hebrew poetry was epochal, characterized this poem, as well as those in chs. 2; 4, as a “political funeral dirge,” a form for mourning being utilized to bewail Jerusalem's fall. While the poet may not be strictly bound by forms (the latter part of this poem is individual lament), this points to something important. In Lam., as in other Hebrew poetry, modern questions of authorship and of the individual experience of the poet can miss the point. Israel's poetry is based on forms arising out of the life of a worshiping community. This is more important for an understanding of that poetry than modern conjecture about the poet's sentiments. So here ancient forms are used to express a people's reaction to the fall of their holy city, the place that had signified the empirical presence of their God.

1:1-11. JERUSALEM'S WIDOWHOOD DESCRIBED.

Alliteratively expressive, How is a formal characteristic of the funeral dirge (cf. 2:1; 4:1, 2; Isa. 1:21; Jer. 48:17; a similar word is found in II Sam. 1:19, 25). Jerusalem is pictured as a widow (cf. Jer. 48:17) bereft of any companion to accompany her, as was the custom, in her lament over her loss. This uncomforted aloneness is a theme of ch. 1 (cf. vss. 9, 16, 17, 21). It is theologically important, for the real situation of Jerusalem is thoroughly faced, and this must come before anything else.

1:3. The reference could be to the deportation of 597 or of 586. Resting place denotes Yahweh's gift to Israel of the land that was the sign of his presence with her. Her distress can also be translated “her narrow defiles.”

1:4. The reference is to the cessation of the worship of Yahweh. Maidens in this context refers to cultic functionaries (cf. Ps. 68:25; Jer. 31:13).

1:5-7. The funeral dirge here gives way to an element common in laments over individual distress—concentration on enemies. Vs. 5 implies a question of whether the gods of the enemies may have prevailed, but then goes on to make the point of the classic prophets: it is precisely the sovereignty of Israel's righteous God that has brought her disaster. Vs. 6 refers to Jerusalem's rulers, Yahweh's surrogates. Thus the problem posed for a faith such as Israel's, based on concrete events and situations, by the catastrophe of 597-586 is expressed. Vs. 7 has too many lines; either the 2nd or 3rd couplet must be an addition.

1:8-9, in terms reminiscent of Hos., Jer., and Ezek., appropriates the prophetic interpretation of Jerusalem's fall. Vs. 9c is a lament cry, presupposing that God's reputation is bound up with the fortunes of his people.

1:10-11 carries out the theme of the last lines of vs. 9. Since the talk is not of the actual destruction of the sanctuary, some cite these verses as evidence that ch. 1 comes from the period between 597 and 586.

1:12-16. JERUSALEM'S FIRST LAMENT.

The viewpoint changes from a lament over Zion to a lament by Zion. This could indicate that the poem had a cultic usage with different voices taking different parts. “Is it nothing to you” is only a guess at what an obscure text means. One scholar translates, “Now then!” Vss. 12-16 explicitly state that Yahweh is responsible for Jerusalem's affliction, and vs. 12 calls the world outside Israel to look upon this as a manifestation of Yahweh's righteous sovereignty. Vs. 13a then uses language traditionally associated with a deity's visit to earth (cf. Ps. 18:1) to picture Yahweh's activity in Jerusalem's fall. The picture of the hunter (vs. 13b) is often used of enemies, and thus is a strong one to use of Israel's God.

1:14 indicates once again that lamenting Israel has appropriated the prophetic message.

1:15 contains 2 colorful pictures: Yahweh commanding the forces that ruin Jerusalem's finest men and Yahweh treading on Jerusalem as in a wine-press (cf. Isa. 63:1; Joel 3:13). “Assembly” has sacral overtones, and may imply more than earthly powers.

1:16 with its picture of weeping Zion reverts to the theme of there being no comforter for her.

1:17-22. JERUSALEM'S 2ND LAMENT.

Vs. 17 is a transition, taking up themes present in the earlier stanzas.

1:18-20 begins like Jer. 12:1. There the words may be sarcastic, but not here. Underlying them may be a custom mirrored in Josh. 7:19-21 according to which one in the wrong praised the righteousness of God. At any rate, the lament of Jerusalem, unlike other laments from the same culture, locates her problem in the facts of divine righteousness and human sin. The prophetic lesson has been learned. Vss. 19-20 recount, as laments always do, the items in the distress.

1:21-22 closes the poem on a note hard for modern men to understand, the imprecation of enemies. Two things lie behind this recurrent element in laments: the empirical, this-worldly theology of Israel and her conviction of the involvement of God's own reputation in the fortunes of his people.

II. THE LORD HAS DESTROYED (2:1-22)

Like the first poem, this is based on a funeral dirge, with the characteristic “How” at its beginning. Attention here, however, is focused on the terrible wrath of God manifested in the unprecedented catastrophe which has overtaken Jerusalem. The poem falls into 2 parts: the poet's own lament in vss. 1-19 and a lament by Jerusalem herself in vss. 20-22. So vivid is the description of what has happened that many have taken this poem to be an eyewitness account of the destruction wrought in Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586. Some hold that transitions such as those at vss. 11 and 18-20 are due to liturgical use of the poem.

2:1-19. THE POET'S LAMENT.

The theme of the poem is set down in vs. 1. The cloud imagery comes from the cult, and is connected with manifestations of deity (cf. Pss. 18:11-12; 68:4; 97:2; 104:3; I Kings 8:10-11). It turns a lament into a hymn celebrating God's sacral act, now an act of wrath in which the previous blessing of Zion is reversed. The holy city's divine election holds even in her sin. She remains a witness to the righteousness of God now, given Israel's condition, manifesting itself as wrath. Thus what might merit sheer wailing is here celebrated in hymnic language. Again the prophetic interpretation of Jerusalem's fall has been understood. Couplet 1b applies an astral image, used elsewhere of foreign rulers (Isa. 14:12; Ezek. 28:17), to the sacred city itself; and couplet 1c asserts that Yahweh has deserted his temple. So the “day” (cf. Amos 5:18) is a “day of his anger.” To see how radical this is, cf. what Pss. 46; 48; 132 claim for Jerusalem.

2:2-10 describes, just as a hymn to God's majesty recounts his mighty deeds, what has happened in “the day of his anger.” Vss. 2-5 recall the devastation of the land that led to the siege of Jerusalem herself, first by the Assyrians (ca. 730-680) and then by the Babylonians (600-586). In this Yahweh, taken by cheap piety to be an ally, is himself the real “enemy” (vss. 4-5). What vss. 6-7 assert about God's destruction of sacred things and places verges on blasphemy, or would to a faith that did not locate God's activity in empirical events—even tragic events. Vss. 8-9 insist that what has happened is the result not of meaningless fate but of the righteous purpose of a righteous God. He himself is the destroyer of all the institutions through which he was sought (vs. 9). So the conclusion to this section in vs. 10 describes the only reaction now appropriate to the reality of how God's righteous sovereignty has manifested itself.

2:11-12 is a transition in which the poet himself reacts to the situation by lamenting. These vss. give a graphic description of the effect of famine on children in the besieged and fallen city (cf. II Kings 25:3; Jer. 37:21).

2:13-17 takes up a central theme of this poem. The disaster by which Jerusalem has been overtaken is, as the day of Yahweh's wrath, incomparable, “vast as the sea.” There is no parallel to it; therefore no one is qualified to comfort Zion. In the light of this theme, vss. 14-17 look to possible comforters. In vs. 14 the poet explicitly sides with the minority prophets against those in the majority who maintained themselves by prophesying the peace and security Israel wanted to hear (cf. Jer. 14:13 ff.; 23:13 ff.; 26:7 ff.; Ezek. 13:1 ff.). Such prophets have been disqualified by events. Reality has voided their credentials, and they can say nothing to comfort Jerusalem now. The poet makes explicit what has been implicit all along: his acceptance of the interpretation given to Jerusalem's downfall by prophets such as Jeremiah and Ezekiel.

2:15-17. Given what vs. 14 has said, is there any possibility of help from outside Israel? Not at all. Both neutral passers-by (vs. 15) and Israel's enemies (vs. 16) rejoice in Jerusalem's catastrophe, see it as what she deserved. So, can God be Jerusalem's comforter (vs. 17)? No, for the point of the whole poem is that the disaster is precisely God's doing, that, given what Israel had become, his day for her had to be a day of wrath.

2:18-19 moves from the lament of the poet to introduce that of Jerusalem herself. With no comforter (vss. 14-17), Zion can only pour out her grief constantly to God. In hymns praising God's activity the characteristic beginning is an imperative “call to worship” (cf. Pss. 29:1; 47:1; 103:1). Here, in the manner of the poet himself (see above on vs. 1) Jerusalem is called on to recite the deeds of Yahweh in the only way she now can, to be a witness to him even in her present condition.

2:20-22. JERUSALEM'S LAMENT.

The poet has the city speak as a grief-stricken mother, and the horrors catalogued speak for themselves. The pervading theme is stated at the beginning, “Look, O Lord, and see! With whom hast thou dealt thus?” This is a central thesis of the poem: no precedent exists anywhere for what has happened to Jerusalem. Thus the siege and fall of city and temple are not just tragic disaster. They plunge Israel into a crisis of faith. God seems to have acted in this day of his wrath in a way contrary to his character and purpose. Though the poems of Lam. probably originated separately, even if from a common author, the crisis of faith enunciated at the end of this poem leads naturally into the one in the following chapter.

III. AN INDIVIDUAL LAMENT AND SONG OF CONFIDENCE (3:1-66)

This poem, unlike chs. 1; 2, is not modeled on a funeral dirge, and its problems have resulted in much debate. Puzzling changes in pronouns occur: an “I” speaks in vss. 1-20, 48-66, while in vss. 40-47 “we” is the subject. Also baffling are the various elements present. Vss. 1-20 are an individual lament, while vss. 21-24 combine elements of the individual thanksgiving and song of trust. Vss. 43-47, where the subject is “we,” are a communal lament. … Vss. 25-42 combine didactic and hortatory moods, reminiscent of the wisdom literature.

To the problem of finding an interpretation accounting for all this must be added the question of the poem's relation to the rest of Lam. Solutions have varied widely. Noting its differences from the rest of the book and its mixtures of pronouns and forms, many have held this poem to be a composite and the latest part of the book. More recently others have accounted for the various voices and elements with the theory that behind it lies cultic usage in which different persons and groups played their parts. It has also been held that the alternation between “I” and “we” is no problem, the “I” being collective.

Recent interpreters have tended to date the poem close to the disaster of 586 or in the exilic period. They have seen the author as a comforter of Israel on the basis of tragic experience, who brings meaning to Israel's suffering by a figure not unlike the suffering servant of Isa. 53. There are diverse elements in the poem, but its acrostic form indicates a unity of authorship. The following interpretation seeks to do justice to both.

Not itself a lament over Jerusalem's fall, the poem addresses itself to the tragic problem posed for Israel by the situation so eloquently described in the poem in ch. 2. This argues for common authorship. The poem bases the comfort it offers to Israel on the experience of tragedy and deliverance described in many psalms in which lament, confession of confidence, and thanksgiving are combined (e.g. Ps. 27). Thus vss. 1-24 are the poet's presentation of what will speak to Jerusalem in her disaster. Vss. 25-39 then point to the lesson the poet believes to come from what is presented in vss. 1-24. Vss. 40-51 exhort Israel to act on the basis of the lesson, giving voice to the lament of Israel and of the poet himself. Finally vss. 52-66 are the poet's song of confidence (firm enough that he can use the perfect tense) that Yahweh will act in redemption as he has acted in judgment.

To assign to the poem a definite time of composition or author is very difficult. It could come from almost any time after 586, and, if the other poems originated in Palestine itself, would come from there too.

3:1-24. THE BASIS OF HOPE.

The question of ch. 2 was, Who can comfort Jerusalem in her unprecedented disaster? The answer here is concrete: an appropriation of the tragic cry of true lament. Whatever the particular tragedy presented in a lament might be, the basic point was always that in it chaos was threatening order, death swallowing up life (cf. Ps. 88). This poem holds that in the suffering and disaster that call forth the lament there is a basis for speaking to the Jerusalem which has known the bitter wrath of God.

3:4-18. The heart of a lament is always a compelling and graphic recitation of the suffering being undergone. Three things occupy attention: the lamenter's own suffering, the enemies who plague him (vs. 14), and God, who is withholding his life-giving and saving presence. Here, while everything is permeated with the sufferer's plight, there is remarkable concentration on God's responsibility for the situation—“He has … He has … He has. …” Indeed, as in Job, the utter despair of the sufferer is bespoken as the figures usually used for evil and demonic enemies are applied to God himself (vss. 10-12). The point is that things have come to where it is possible to cry out to God only that order has been overwhelmed by chaos, life by death (cf. such classic laments as Pss. 22; 88; 143).

3:19-23. But all this is cried out to God. Implied in every lament, just by virtue of its being expressed, is what is called “the certainty of a hearing.” This certainty is itself the subject of OT poetry (cf. Pss. 27: 1-3; 23). So here, after vss. 19-21 have turned from description of distress to direct calling on God, vss. 22-24 express the confidence that God will hear. The basis of the certainty is the important OT concept of hesed, usually rendered in the RSV “steadfast love” (vs. 22). The basic connotations of the word have to do with committed, loving loyalty to a covenant obligation. The concrete character of Hebrew thinking is shown by the word's being used here in the plural; it refers to specific events and actions, not an abstract concept. Its meaning is indicated by its being parallel to “faithfulness” (vs. 23).

3:24. The phrase “says my soul” means “I say to myself.” The Israelite who takes the covenant seriously can remind himself that Yahweh is his “portion”—the possession measured out to him in life. And Yahweh's record is such that even in deepest distress hopeful waiting is justified. When a lament was recited in a time of distress in the sanctuary, it was answered after a time of vigil by an oracle pronouncing salvation. Thus “I will hope in him” has very concrete overtones.

3:25-39. THE LESSON TO BE APPROPRIATED.

Vss. 25-26 provide a transition to the next section of the poem by alluding to the cultic setting of a lament. To seek Yahweh originally meant to go to the sanctuary. The word for “wait” may originally have referred to the period of vigil preceding the oracle of salvation (cf. Ps. 27:14; Isa. 40:31). But the sanctuary is now gone; and, in the style of the wise men, the poet begins to insist that its procedures provide a lesson in the principles by which God works at any time. So vs. 27 is a typical wisdom maxim. It may indicate that the poet is chiefly concerned with the younger generation with whom Israel's future lies.

3:28-30. In line with what has been implied in the preceding laments, particularly ch. 2, the poet insists that the first step to salvation is an acceptance of the situation for what it is (note the reticent realism of vs. 29b). Vs. 30 is certainly support for the contention that Isa. 53 betrays a kinship with Lam.

3:31-33. Out of acceptance of judgment can come knowledge of the basically good purpose of God which undergirds his judgment. What to men look, according to the condition in which men are found, like 2 opposing things are to God one thing. His “steadfast love” (see above on vs. 22) is always the same and is the source of what to sinful man has to be described as wrath. But to accepting, repentant man (vss. 28-30) it is the basis of hope.

3:34-37 develops explicitly what underlies the confidence of vss. 31-33. Not meaningless injustice but righteousness is the will of Israel's God (vss. 34-36). And Israel's God is the sovereign Lord. Thus even the tragic disaster through which Israel has passed is something filled with meaning. This is the prophetic insight which redeemed catastrophe from meaninglessness for Israelites who, like this poet, were able to appropriate the prophetic message. This lesson, proclaimed by the prophets and typically enunciated in Israel's ancient faith, is that to which the poet now points Israel. The rhetorical questions of vss. 37-39 provide a transition to the 2 final parts of the poem.

3:40-51. THE PEOPLE'S AND THE POET'S LAMENT.

Given the theology underlying vss. 34-39, the cause for lament inevitably shifted in Israel from what it was elsewhere. For Israel, God being what he had shown himself to be, the fundamental human problem was not that creaturely finitude was assailed by meaningless and amoral forces from which salvation was desperately sought. For Israel the fundamental problem was human unrighteousness, creaturely rebellion against the sovereign righteousness of God. Of this basic problem disaster such as that by which Jerusalem had been overtaken was a secondary and understandable by-product. Meaning was to be found for those who would, in ruthless honesty about themselves, seek it (vss. 40-41). And the search would lead to fruitful lament, lament over what was really askew in life (vs. 42).

3:43-51. Though the description in vss. 43-45 of Israel's present condition is as graphic as anything in chs. 1; 2, the communal lament to which the poet calls the survivors of Jerusalem moves in hopeful trust to its conclusion in vss. 49-51. If this whole ch. is understood as a unity, and this section as the poet's rhetorical summons to Israel (with which he identifies himself) to lament, then the switch from plural to singular pronouns in vss. 48-51 is no problem. It is only a sign of the extent to which the poet is himself involved in the situation to which he addresses himself.

3:52-66. THE POET'S SONG OF CONFIDENCE.

In Israel's sacred poetry the counterpart of the lament was the song of thanksgiving, in which, after the deliverance cried for, a man recited how God had saved him. … This form underlies the conclusion to the present poem. Having described in traditional lament language a desperate situation (vss. 52-54), the poet uses prolepsis, the figure in which one anticipates coming events as if they have already occurred, to describe how God will answer the cry of Israel (vss. 55-66). The “Do not fear!” of vs. 57 may be a direct quotation of what was said in the oracle of reassurance that followed a lament in the sanctuary. Emphasis on “enemies” not only arises out of the derision to which Israel was subjected following her downfall (cf. Ps. 137) but is in line with the concrete character of Israel's faith, in which God's purposes and the forces opposing them were seen in terms of empirical events and persons in real life. If the sentiments of vss. 64-66 are neither understandable nor acceptable to modern man, they arise from the point of view just described, and are paralleled many times in the psalms. They come from a faith which could not conceive of God's salvation and blessing in other than visible, historical terms.

IV. THROUGH TRAGEDY TO VINDICATION (4:1-22)

Here there is a return to the funeral lament form of chs. 1; 2. The typical “How” (see above on 1:1) is the beginning. In this poem, again an acrostic, the 3-couplet stanzas of chs. 1-3 give way to stanzas of 2 couplets.

In content this poem returns from the themes of ch. 3 to the kind of thing found in chs. 1; 2. It vividly describes the results of the Babylonian siege and destruction of Jerusalem, although at its conclusion it looks through tragedy to vindication. The realism of its reference to the trials of the city has caused some to assert that the poem is the product of an eye-witness of the siege, but the denunciation of Edom at the end may indicate a later time in the exilic period when Edom's encroachment on former Judean territory resulted in a good deal of animosity (cf. Obad. and probably late passages in Jer. and Ezek.).

4:1-2 refers to the destruction of the temple, the chief tragedy of Jerusalem's downfall for the pious Israelite. Vs. 2 leads into what is to occupy attention in most of this lament, the suffering of the people in Jerusalem at its destruction. “The precious sons of Zion” is evidence of the meaning to Israel of her election as God's people.

4:3-5 describes the famine that accompanied the siege, concentrating on the terrible results of it for the children of the city. On the ostrich and its treatment of its young cf. Job 39:13-18.

4:6 is one of a series of stanzas coming at regular intervals in this poem (vss. 6, 11, 16) by which the recitation of the disaster is punctuated with proclamations of it as God's wrath on a rebellious people. Here the proverbial wickedness of Sodom (cf. Gen. 19) serves as a model of the condition of Jerusalem. An insight into the Hebrew view of life is provided in the double meaning of “chastisement” and “punishment.” Each word can denote both evil and the consequences of it in a world ruled by a righteous God. This poem, unlike chs. 2; 3, simply alludes to Israel's sin in a vivid description of the siege and destruction of Jerusalem. It does not dwell on the point, but takes the prophetic interpretation of the dreadful events for granted.

4:7-8 describes in vivid terms the transformation produced in even the most handsome and healthy of Jerusalem's youth (“princes” may not be correct) by the famine.

4:9-10 continues, asserting that death in the famine was worse than falling in battle, and that hunger drove even the most compassionate of mothers to kill and eat their children.

4:11 again explicitly connects what the poem laments with God's judgmental wrath (cf. vss. 6, 16). Unlike 2:20, in which vs. 10 is paralleled, vs. 11 does not question Yahweh's involvement in the disaster.

4:12 provides a transition to a new section by underlining vs. 11. What Yahweh has done in judgment was beyond the imagination even of those not themselves involved in feeling for Jerusalem. This verse brings to mind the advantageous location of Jerusalem (II Sam. 5:6), and also Israel's convictions about her invulnerability (cf. Pss. 46; 48; 87) against which Jeremiah had to inveigh (Jer. 7; 26).

4:13-15 locates the cause of the judgment of Jerusalem in the sin of prophets and priests. Though some have interpreted “The blood of the righteous” as an allusion to some specific wrong of the religious leaders, it more probably refers to their responsibility for what has happened to the innocent in the siege and destruction. Vss. 14-15 probably describe the prophets and priests (cf. vs. 16), though a number of interpreters have applied them to the “righteous” of vs. 13. In line with what all the classic prophets had insisted, this poem asserts that those whose responsibility it was to declare God's way and will to his people had not done so (cf. Amos 7:14-17; Hos. 6:9; 9:7-8; Isa. 28:7-22; Jer. 6:13-15; 23:11-22; Ezek. 22:23-31). So distorted had Israel's view of her God become, because of the perversions of prophet and priest, that God, without compromising his character, could act toward her only in judgment. So the blood of the righteous is on their hands.

4:16, a counterpart to vss. 6, 11, makes it explicit that the defiling of the sacral persons from their ritual cleanness and their exile into lands not Yahweh's is the work of Yahweh himself as he acts in his wrath.

4:17-20 concludes the lament's account of Jerusalem's terrible fall by describing how nothing could be relied on to avert the disaster. Vss. 17-18 indicate that the poet understood what the prophets had continually insisted—that no foreign alliance could thwart Yahweh's judgment on his people (cf. Isa. 30-31; Jer. 2:18, 36). Vs. 20, contrary to the claims so often made for the Davidic monarchy (II Sam. 7; Pss. 2; 110), recounts how Yahweh's own king could not stop the fall of Jerusalem, but experienced its consequences himself.

4:21-22. Unlike those in chs. 2; 3, this poem does not question the ultimately redemptive purpose of Yahweh even in his wrathful judgment. Thus it ends with words of comfort to Israel. Some have conjectured that cultic usage underlies the poem, and that these final vss. were an oracle of reassurance addressed to the community that had lamented. In line with Israel's concrete view of things (see above on 3:58-66), God's comforting of Israel is pictured as a very visible punishment of her enemy Edom, who had apparently taken advantage of Israel after the Babylonian invasion and therefore came in for much castigation during the exilic and postexilic periods (cf. Obad.; Isa. 34:5-7; Jer. 49:7-22; Ezek. 25:12-14).

V. A COMMUNAL LAMENT AND PRAYER (5:1-22)

This poem differs from the others in 2 ways. First, although the number of couplets is the same as the 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet, it is not an acrostic. On the one hand, this fact has been used to argue for its basic unity and for its having come from the same writer as the other poems. On the other hand, some have held this to be artificial and the result of secondary reaction. Current critical opinion tends toward the former view.

Second, this poem is a pure example of the communal lament. … It begins with a cry to God in the imperative, recites the causes of the lament in the first person plural, and concludes with a petition to God for relief. Various hints about the use of such poems (Josh. 7:6-9; Judg. 20-23, 26; I Kings 8:33-34; Jer. 14:2; Joel 1:13-14) make it seem possible that this one was written for some public occasion of lamentation after the fall of Jerusalem in 586 b.c.

5:1-18. THE LAMENT.

Vs. 1 begins in the manner of the lament, either communal or individual, with a direct call on God and an imperative request that God “remember” (better, “direct his attention to”) the condition of the lamenter or act on his behalf.

5:2 is descriptive of more than a political and economic disaster. The word for “inheritance” is central to Israel's theology. The concrete sign of her relation to God was his provision for Israel of a land of her own. The loss of that land to other peoples presented, therefore, a crisis for faith, and that crisis is the central subject of Lam.

5:3-5. Vs. 3 can be interpreted as a description of the situation when many men had been killed, or, more likely, in line with vs. 2, as a tragic assertion that Israel has been abandoned by her God. Vs. 4 carries on the same line of thought, the point being that the rights to the resources of the land now belong to others. Vs. 5 provides a climax with its declaration of the loss of personal freedom.

5:6-8 forms a unit and refers to pacts made in the 2 centuries before Jerusalem's fall as expansion of various imperial powers began to spell Israel's doom. As the prophets had consistently insisted, the compromise involved in such pacts was apostasy from Yahweh's claim to absolute sovereignty and so has to be characterized as sin and iniquity. Vs. 7 must precede the doctrine advanced in Ezek. 18. Vs. 8 asserts the bitter irony that a people whose relation to their God originated in emancipation from slavery are now subject to peoples whose gods are oppressors rather than redeemers (cf. the view of man in Gen. 1 with that in the Babylonian creation epic).

5:9-15, typical of the lament form, recounts the difficulties being undergone by those who have survived the fall of Jerusalem. Harvesting of crops is made dangerous by bedouin marauders from the desert (vs. 9), famine has produced illness (vs. 10), all elements of society suffer the results of chaotic lawlessness (vss. 11-14), and joy is entirely turned to sadness (vs. 15).

5:16. The hardest fact of all is the voiding of Israel's choice as God's blessed people. The lamenting community accepts the prophetic assessment of the reason for the catastrophe.

5:17-18 provides both the climax of the lament proper and the transition to the petition. The central tragedy of it all for the Israel of God is the cessation of her life as the community whose worship on Zion is the earthly, visible locus of the sovereignty of God. In the most profound sense chaos has replaced order—yet not entirely for the people whose prophets have made possible the confession of vs. 16b. If tragedy has meaning, God can still be turned to in prayer for the future.

5:19-22. THE PETITION.

What was implied in the above is made explicit in the hymnic introduction (vs. 19). It is not Yahweh's sovereignty but Israel's previous status that has collapsed. So the lamenting “Why” (vs. 20) and a petition for restoration (vs. 21) can be addressed to him. And, if the central fact of life is his sovereignty, then the tragic situation of Israel may even be faced as unalterable (vs. 22). The last verse of Lam. sums up the evidence of all its poetry that there were those in Israel who could accept the prophetic interpretation of her downfall.