What's LAMENTATIONS about?

Background

Lamentations was written during the exile to Babylon. It consists of five poems, each now given its own chapter, but each by a different poet. Each chapter has exactly twenty-two verses, each verse starting in order with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet—in much the way that Psalm 119 does. During the time of enslavement in Babylon, the Hebrew alphabetical order was changed to be more like the one used by the Babylonians, but the five poems in Lamentations use the older alphabetical order. That’s how we know that the poems were written before the people returned to Jerusalem—the order of the first word of each verse uses the older pre-exile alphabetical order.

The five poems are almost exclusively dirges and laments for the destruction of Jerusalem. In the first poem (chapter 1), Jerusalem sits on a hill, in the form of a widow, bemoaning the destruction of the city. In the second poem the destruction is attributed to the sins of injustice by the people. The third poem hopes that the punishment of the people will result in their growth. The fourth poem laments the destruction of Jerusalem and attributes it to the people’s sin. The fifth poem hopes that the ignominy will be removed.

Passages from this book are often used during Holy Week and especially on Good Friday.

What can Lamentations mean for us?

We can read this book with two things in mind. First, it refuses to minimize the reality that deep pain is part of people’s life experiences. The book insists that pain is real and that the consequences of self-centred living are real. Religion, then, is never to be an escape into an unreal imaginary world. Religion sometimes requires us to enter into pain. Religion isn’t entertainment. Secondly, experiencing pain isn’t about wallowing in suffering, but in keeping our eyes open to the truth—if the pain is a result of our own actions, then we take responsibility even if that makes no difference. In doing so there is the hope of dignity being restored to us.