This dirge of desolation can be treated as a postscript to the Book of Jeremiah. The five Lamentations forming the book are actually five heart-cries, or, seeing that in their original form there were no chapter and verse divisions, one long prayer of pathos. Dr. C. I. Scofield says of Lamentations, “The touching significance of this book lies in the fact that it is the disclosure of the love and sorrow of Jehovah for the very people whom He is chastening—a sorrow wrought by the Spirit in the heart of Jeremiah (Jeremiah 13:17; Matthew 23:36, 38; Romans 9:1-5).”

Dr. Alexander Whyte had a profound admiration for the book. “There is nothing like the Lamentations of Jeremiah in the whole world. There has been plenty of sorrow in every age, and in every land, but such another preacher and author, with such a heart for sorrow has never again been born. Dante comes next to Jeremiah and we know that Jeremiah was that great exile's favorite prophet.”

Attention must be drawn to the unique construction of this book filled with tears, the key verses of which (1:8, 10) remind us of Christ's heart-anguish over Jerusalem (Matthew 23:36; Isaiah 63:9). The literary form of the original presents an acrostic dirge. Each chapter is an elegy constructed as an acrostic in the order of the Hebrew alphabet. The lines were arranged in couplets or triplets, each of which began with a letter of the alphabet. The Third Lamentation is made up of sixty-six verses, and these are divided into groups each with three verses, with each group beginning with one of the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Thus verses 1-3 of our version form but three lines of the original, each line beginning with A, etc. The last chapter is not arranged acrostically.