SUMMARY
The five poems of Lamentations respond to a catastrophe in JudahJudah was the name of Jacob’s fourth son and one of the 12 tribes. More. Written in third- and first-person voices, the book both acknowledges the present as the consequence of past disobedience and challenges the adequacy of that acknowledgement to account for the current suffering. God has judged; human enemies have attacked. But the extent and relentlessness of the suffering are unbearable. Theological claims about God’s mercyMercy is a term used to describe leniency or compassion. God’s mercy is frequently referred to or invoked in both the Old and New Testaments. More and justice are not operating in life as it is currently experienced by the speakers. The content pleads for God to look, see, and act. The book consists of prayers of sufferers, not theology about suffering.
SO WHAT?
Lamentations challenges all piety that commends passive, silent suffering. Even if the suffering is just punishment-something not fully conceded-the book articulates the horror endured communally and individually during and in the wake of the destruction of the structures of corporate and individual life. If biblical faith is understood as living in an “already-not yet” tension, Lamentations demands that readers not gloss over the suffering and horror of the “not yet.” One form of waiting on God is shouting the laments of this book.
WHERE DO I FIND IT?
In the Protestant canonA canon is a general law or principle by which something is judged. The body of literature in the Old and New Testaments is accepted by most Christians as being canonical (that is, authentic and authoritative) for them. More Lamentations is the twenty-fifth book of the Old Testament. It lies between JeremiahProphet who condemned Judah’s infidelity to God, warned of Babylonian conquest, and promised a new covenant More and EzekielA prophet during the Babylonian exile who saw visions of God’s throne-chariot, new life to dry bones, and a new Temple. More.
WHO WROTE IT?
In both Jewish and Christian tradition the book is attributed to Jeremiah. That claim has been challenged with reason, but it has not been completely displaced. Current emphasis centers on the function of the book more than on identifying a specific individual author.
WHEN WAS IT WRITTEN?
It is customary to understand the book to have arisen in the wake of the destruction of Jerusalem. The expressions in the book are sufficiently general and conventional to fit other periods, but this does not lessen their accuracy or horror. They have continued to be used in liturgies memorializing subsequent moments of horror in Jewish history. There is, however, no compelling reason to imagine an original setting other than shortly after 587 B.C.E. At the very least, the writer asks the reader to imagine a catastrophe and suffering no less extensive than that experienced in the destruction of Jerusalem in 587.
WHAT’S IT ABOUT?
Lamentations articulates the pain experienced in the collapse of Judah and Jerusalem, presumably in 587 B.C.E. Third-person narration both describes and explains the suffering, but the book insistently moves toward direct, first-person articulation of the unbearable pain and devastation and God’s responsibility for it. The latter leads to direct address to God to see, to consider, and to restore the speaker(s). The book moves from silent suffering to verbalizing the suffering and, in turn, demanding that God, the source of the suffering, end the suffering. The book refuses to be silent in the face of God’s silence.
HOW DO I READ IT?
While it is inevitable that the book be read as a collection of prayers of ancient sufferers grappling with God, the present reader is drawn in to read it now as an act of prayer. The gruesome depiction of suffering does not permit distance. The reader is asked to look, to see, and to act, just as is God in the prayers. Silent distance is not permitted. It would be appropriate for readers to be moved to work to alleviate contemporary suffering, but not without joining the text’s petitioners in their prayers against the silence of God. As the theology of 3:22-24 does not silence the voice of the petitioners in the rest of Lamentations, readers should not rush to use other sections of the canon to silence Lamentations. Isaiah 40-55 may well be a response to Lamentations, but it does not silence the book. Both voices are “scripturally” approved.
