Day 25 – Wednesday -- The Book of Lamentations

Day 25 – Wednesday

The Book of Lamentations

If Jeremiah was the Weeping Prophet, Lamentations is the Weeping Book. This is a sad book. A wailing book. You hear bag pipes as you read it. Tradition says that Jeremiah wrote this book (that’s why is has been put right after Jeremiah). We are told in 2 Chronicles 35 that Jeremiah wrote a book of laments—funeral songs for King Josiah. But some scholars think that Lamentations was written by someone else sense Jeremiah’s later writings were filled with hope and the author is not named.

It was written between 586 and 538. Jerusalem has been destroyed. These five poems express the grief of the people. The two and a half year siege had been horrible. People starved, though some killed their own children for food.

Look, O Lord, and consider!
    To whom have you done this?
Should women eat their offspring,
    the children they have borne? (2.20)
Happier were those pierced by the sword
    than those pierced by hunger,
whose life drains away, deprived
    of the produce of the field.
The hands of compassionate women
    have boiled their own children;
they became their food
    in the destruction of my people. (4.9-10)

No wonder the author of Psalm 137 prays a vengeful prayer:

Lord, remember what the Edomites did
        on Jerusalem’s dark day:
    “Rip it down, rip it down!
    All the way to its foundations!” they yelled.
Daughter Babylon, you destroyer,
    a blessing on the one who pays you back
    the very deed you did to us!
    A blessing on the one who seizes your children
    and smashes them against the rock!              (Common English Bible)

In situations of devastation people need to re-establish some kind of order. The author of these Post Traumatic Stress poems tries to provide a sense of order by beginning each verse with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet in their normal order. From aleph to taw (our “a to z”) the poet gives a feeling of completeness to contrast with the emotional brokenness being felt throughout the Jewish community.

Once a year (August or September) the Jewish community of faith reads the Book of Lamentations aloud to commemorate the destruction of both the first Temple in 587 BCE and the second Temple in 70 CE. Verses from chapter three are often incorporated into Christian worship on Maundy Thursday or Good Friday.

We Christians need to use the literature of lament in our Scriptures more often in worship and private prayer. In doing so, we give voice to not only our sadness, but to the realities experienced by so many people all around the world every day.

One of my favorite verses from Lamentations is a suggested opening verse for Morning Prayer in the Presbyterian (USA) Daily Prayer Book. The verse is:

The Lord’s unfailing love and mercy never cease,
fresh as the morning and sure as the sunrise. (3.22-23) 

Finish this: O Lord, what makes me want to cry right now is….