Book of Lamentations - Bible Survey

(2) Lamentations is of course the supplement to Jeremiah; and not a supplement of joy, but a strain of sorrow, as its title indicates, over the desolate city. I know no characteristics by which to separate it from the book of the prophet itself, except that it is not a prophecy but a lament.

The first two chapters in the brief book of Jeremiah’s Lamentations mostly describe Jerusalem and its destruction. In chapters 4 and 5 he recalls the grief and anguish of the siege and the consequences of Nebuchadnezzar’s final victory. At the central point of the book of Lamentations (chapter 3) he relates especially his own trials in language which (as various Psalms) can also apply to the sufferings of Christ.

The Lamentations. It is self-evident that this book is from the pen of Jeremiah. The Septuagint has the following passage: — "And it came to pass after that Israel was taken captive, and Jerusalem was laid waste, that Jeremiah sat weeping and lamented this lamentation over Jerusalem." These strains of anguish uttered over the success of the Chaldean attack upon Jerusalem, and the consequent desolation of city and people, are most touchingly expressed. The death of the godly Josiah (2 Chron. 35:24-25) was the immediate occasion of these strains of unrivalled pathos, as the last hope of Israel died in the death of the godly monarch.

The book originally constituted one work with the prophecies of Jeremiah. The structure of the book is worth noticing. The first, second, and fourth chapters each contain twenty-two verses, and are, in the original, arranged alphabetically according to the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The third chapter of sixty-six verses is also alphabetic in structure, only there are three verses to each letter. The fifth chapter consists of twenty-two verses, but is not similarly arranged. Several of the Psalms, as the 119th, etc., are constructed in like manner, proof of God's tender compassion for the feeble minds and failing memories of His poor people.

Although the Lamentations do not bear any name of an author they have been ascribed to the prophet Jeremiah in the oldest tradition already. The Book of Lamentations in the Septuagint (Greek translation of the OT, around 200 BC) begins with the following words: "And it happened after Israel had been led captive and Jerusalem had been destroyed that Jeremiah sat and lamented with the following lamentation and said: How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people!" Most researchers - included the ones who refuse Jeremiah as author - would agree that the author must have been an eyewitness of Jerusalem's destruction (compare with Jer. 39). Jeremiah's authorship is underlined by a number of stylistic parallels in the two consecutive books.

Jerusalem's destruction by the Babylonians in the year 586 BC, which is described in the Lamentations by Jeremiah as eyewitness, is decisive for the date of writing. The time of writing therefore will have to be set shortly after this incident and in Jeremiah's last years of life.

The Lamentations are the expression of a heart full of love for the earthly people of Jehovah, a people punished for their sins by loosing their kingdom, their land, their city and their sanctuary. Jeremiah considers himself as part of these people but thereby repents and puts his hope in spite of all mourning in God.

The Lamentations are written in poetry. The five chapters form five stanzas of one elegy over Zion's fall.

Lamentations—This little book of five chapters is full of suffering, sadness, sorrow and desolation. It is quite unique; and like one bereaved of every loved object, it mourns all alone. It is apart, and truly sits solitary (Lam. 1:1). There is nothing else like it in all the scriptures. The divinely designed acrostic order in it is most marked however, being very distinct and definite.

The first two chapters, and the last two, have each 22 verses, the number of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet; whilst the centre chapter, the third, it will be noticed, has three times 22, making 66 verses; and these are arranged thus: three verses, each beginning with à, three verses, each beginning with á; and so on to the end. Chapters 1, 2 and 4, are also alphabetical; having one verse to each letter. They are, as we have said, all five filled full of affliction, and mourning, and sorrow; indeed, the cup of bitterness flows over; and when the final lament is reached in the last chapter, the soul seems so overcome in the presence of God, that the alphabetical order is altogether forsaken and forgotten, although the number of verses, 22, is still retained; so this fifth chapter ends thus: “Thou hast utterly rejected us; Thou art very wroth against us.” To this sad and solitary soul all seems to be lost in hopelessness and helplessness.

Zion's desolation by the Chaldeans, expressed in touching strains of anguish.

It is notable, but by no means an unprecedented thing, that the book, which more than any other breathes the distress of a pious and broken heart, is clothed in a markedly artificial form. God meant His people to share the prophet's lamentation; and its predominant shape occupied his heart who wrote, and theirs who pondered and remembered it all the more. Its five chapters are five elegies. Lam. 1, Lam. 2 have twenty-two stanzas or verses, answering to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and each stanza with three parts. In the third chapter the initial letter occurs for each of the three parts, when the prophet speaks personally of his own sufferings, as before and after Lam. 3 he pours forth his groans over the city destroyed with all its glories. In Lam. 4 each stanza consists of two parts, each verse beginning with the successive letters of the alphabet. Though Lam. 5 has twenty-two stanzas or verses of two parts, the initial letters do not follow regularly. It is throughout a true-hearted confession of sins. "The crown is fallen from our head; woe unto us for we have sinned! For this our heart is faint; for these things our eyes have grown dim, because of the mountain of Zion, which is desolate: foxes walk over it. Thou, Jehovah, dwellest for ever; thy throne is from generation to generation. Wherefore dost thou forget us for ever — dost thou forsake us so long time? Turn thou us unto thee, Jehovah, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old. Or is it that thou hast utterly rejected us — art wroth with us exceedingly?"

The book has then a place quite unique, from a heart which answered to the love of Jehovah for His people, when they were most justly in the depths because of their sins and His chastisement, even to blotting them out from His land, city, kingdom, and house. It is thorough self-judgment in the heart's solidarity with them and clinging in the face and experience of all to Him. Can we not discern what a gap for the Bible if we had not Lamentations? What will it not be to the godly in their last tribulation? Did the writer forget his own purchase (Jer. 32.) in faith of the word? or his prophecy of Israel under Messiah and the new covenant? Assuredly not; yet none the less did he mourn the ruin of Israel, and that Jehovah should have grounds so valid for His severe chastening.

It is no uncommon thought now, as of old, to assume that the book on which we are now entering consists of the Lamentations written by the prophet on the occasion of Josiah's death. (2 Chron. 35:25.) If a divine testimony affirmed this, it would be our place to believe it: to that no one pretends, still there is the secret assumption that what Jeremiah composed in sorrow for Josiah must be in the Bible, and hence must be this book. But there is no sufficient reason to conclude that all the writings of prophets were inspired for the permanent use of God's people: rather is there good ground to conclude that they were not. Hence we are free to examine the character of the work before us, not to question its divine authority but to ascertain as far as may be its aim and the subjects of which it treats. But, if so, the contents themselves are adverse to the idea; for the distressing prostration of Jerusalem, not the death of the pious king cut down so young, is clearly in view. The description of the state of the city, sanctuary, and people does not accord with Josiah's death; and even the king, whose humiliation is named (Lam. 2:9), could not possibly be Josiah, who was slain in battle, instead of being among the Gentiles and therefore in captivity. It was no doubt Jehoiachin whose varied lot we can easily trace by comparing the prophecy and 2 Kings 24, 25. All the circumstances of that time tally with the bewailings here.

That the Spirit of prophecy dictated the book cannot be justly doubted, though it may not have direct predictions like the former work from which in the Hebrew Bible it has long been severed as to place, though not so in the days of Josephus. Nevertheless the distinctness of object, tone, and manner is sufficiently marked to justify our viewing it as a separate work of the same writer, Jeremiah. It was morally good that we should have not only predictions of the deep trouble coming on the house of David and Jerusalem, but also the outpouring of a godly heart broken by anguish for the people of God, and the more because they deserved all that fell upon them through their enemies at God's hand. We little think what such an one as Jeremiah must have felt to see the temple destroyed, the holy service suspended, the king and priests and bulk of Judah carried off by their idolatrous conqueror, compelled to own also that their desolation was most righteous because of their sins. Even when he had survived the events which proved the value of his own slighted prophecies, he was inspired to pour forth these elegies which were no vain complaints as we shall see, but a spreading out of the woes of the city and people before a God whose compassion and faithfulness are alike infinite. He vindicates God in what He had done to unhappy Jerusalem. He places before God the utter ruin of the people, civilly and religiously, charging the false prophets with luring them into the pit by their falsehood and flattery, but exhorting the people to repentance. He shows his own sense of sorrow deeper than that of any other, as indeed he both suffered peculiarly from the Jews themselves before the crash came, and the Spirit of Christ that was in him gave him to realize all, where others nerved themselves to brave it with the mailed armour of insensibility and indomitable pride; yet does he cherish hope in what God is, who loves to lift up the fallen and abase the proud. He contrasts their present misery, because of the sins of their priests and prophets, with their former prosperity, but declares that an end will be to Zion's punishment, but none to Edom's. Lastly, he prayerfully spreads out all their own calamities before Jehovah; his only confidence too is in Him who can turn us to Himself, whatever may be His just wrath.

The form is very notable; save in the last chapter, all are acrostic or at least alphabetic. De Wette, with the usual arrogance of a rationalist, pronounces this of itself as an offspring of the later vitiated taste. But this he must do in defiance of the plain fact that those admirable and even early Psalms 25, 34, 37 are similarly constructed, not to speak of the wonderful Psalm 119 and several others in the same fifth book of the Psalter (111, 112, 145.). Those who pronounce these psalms cold, feeble, and flat, as well as unconnected, simply betray their own lack of all just appreciation, not to speak of reverence which we may not expect from men who deny them in any true sense to be of God. The first, second, and fourth chapters are so written that each verse begins with one of the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet in due succession, save that in the second and fourth cadhe <span style="font-family: 'H ebraica'"></span> follows instead of preceding Pe <span style="font-family: 'H ebraica'">p</span> ; and the same transposition occurs in [Lam. 3, where we have three verses instead of single ones, which so commence; and hence there are in it 66 verses. Another peculiarity is to be noticed, that each verse (except Lam. 1:7, Lam. 2:19) is a sort of triplet in chapters 1, 2, 3. Lam. 4 is characterized by couplets (save ver. 15); and a singular structure is traceable in Lam. 5, save that it does not begin with the letters of the alphabet, though it consists of twenty-two verses. "Difference of authorship" is the ready but monotonous cry of dark scepticism: others as despairing of intelligence impute it to forgetfulness, a third to accident! The propriety of the change in what throughout is a prayer and confession to Jehovah must be apparent to the spiritual mind. The alphabetic form may have had a mnemonic object in view. For pathos the book as a whole is unequalled.