When was Lamentations written?

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.

In the tenth month of the ninth year of the reign of Zedekiah, Nebuchadnezzar comes and besieges Jerusalem. Sixteen months later the city is broken up (39:1-2). As the king of Judah and his men of war flee, they are pursued and overtaken by the army of the Chaldeans. Captured, Zedekiah is taken to Riblah, where Nebuchadnezzar pronounces judgment upon him. “The king of Babylon slaughtered the sons of Zedekiah in Riblah before his eyes, and the king of Babylon slaughtered all the nobles of Judah; and he put out the eyes of Zedekiah, and bound him with chains of brass, to carry him to Babylon” (v.6-7). Jerusalem is taken; the house of the king and the houses of the people are burned; the walls of the city are broken down; the temple is plundered and destroyed, and the people are taken captive to Babylon (2 Kings 25:9-11). Overwhelmed with these misfortunes, Jeremiah writes his “Lamentations”.

“How lonely sits the city that was full of people ... She weeps bitterly in the night, her tears are on her cheeks ... Judah has gone into captivity ... She dwells among the nations, and finds no rest” (Lam. 1:1-13). God has given full vent to His anger against “the daughter of Zion” (2:1-2). The altar has been cast off. The sanctuary has been rejected. The walls of the palaces have been given into the hand of the enemy. They have shouted loudly in the house of God. The ramparts and the wall have been destroyed. The gates are broken down. The princes have been exiled among the nations. The law is in effect no more, and the prophets find no vision from the Lord. The elders sit upon the ground in silence and have put dust upon their heads. The virgins of Jerusalem hang down their heads to the ground (2:7-10).

This is a book of deepest pathos, written after the captivity of Judah, the city of Jerusalem having been reduced to desolation. Yet the very language of the prophet bears clear witness to the tender concern of the Lord for His people in all their afflictions. If in one respect the sorrows of Israel are considered as caused by the malice of enemies (and God will take full account of this), yet too, Jeremiah rightly feels these to be from the hand of God in chastening Judah for her sins. This is suited language for those exercised properly before God, in brokenness and confession.

They evidently realized this, for we read, "All Judah and Jerusalem mourned for Josiah. And Jeremiah lamented for Josiah: and all the singing men and the singing women spake of Josiah in their lamentations to this day, and made them an ordinance in Israel: and, behold, they are written in the lamentations." These "lamentations" must not be confounded with Jeremiah's "Lamentations," written over (and therefore after) Jerusalem's fall. (Comp. Jer. 22:10-13; Zech. 12:11.)

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.

Well, Jeremiah’s history commenced in the days of Josiah’s passover. He sang the Lamentations when that faithful king was slain. There have been men whose ministry has left a big mark, so to say, behind them; it was not so with him (unless what he has written). He was the voice of God to His poor people as long as they had an ear to hear. Look at ch. 13. What does he say? If you do not hearken to His words, I will go and weep for you before the Lord (Jer. 13:15-17).

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.

After the destruction of Jerusalem (the occasion for his composition of the Lamentations), Jeremiah, ironically, ended up the only free man in the country. Some were taken by Nebuzaradan and some were ordered to stay but Jeremiah was given the choice (40:4).

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

Jeremiah, 2 Chron. 35:25.

Palestine, about 588 B.C. (?)

1869 370 In reading the Lamentations one cannot fail to be struck with the abrupt introduction of the subject of Lamentations 3. The occasion of the composition of the book is manifest on the surface of it. Jerusalem had fallen a prey to the Chaldeans, the Gentiles had entered those sacred courts and enclosures, which need never have been defiled by the tread of uncircumcised bands; "she hath seen that the heathen entered into her sanctuary, whom thou didst command that they should not enter into thy congregation." (Lam. 1:10.) Jerusalem's desolate condition drew forth the prophet's lamentations; yet a large part of chapter 3 is taken up with a description of his personal sufferings at the hand of his people (for the Chaldeans treated him kindly), while yet Jerusalem was uncaptured. What connection was there between his sufferings from the Jews, and imprisonment in the dungeon, while the throne of David was filled by a prince reigning at Jerusalem, and the house built by Solomon to be very magnifical, was still standing, and the sad calamity which had overtaken the metropolis of the land? It was just this connection which furnished ground for the sorrowing prophet, inspired by the Spirit of God to pen these beautiful poems, some of whose verses have comforted God's saints in many an age and many a trial since.

That Jeremiah was the writer of the book has been generally acknowledged, and internal evidence of it is afforded in the allusions to his own history it contains. He loved Jerusalem well; for, though Anathoth in Benjamin was the city of his birth, understanding as he did what Jerusalem was in God's counsels, how could he have helped loving her, and that dearly? Her troubles then were a grief of heart to him; and, though he had endured such ill treatment in the city from those high in office, he did not exult over her fall, but tears filled his eyes as he saw the destruction of the daughter of his people, and his heart only found a fitting vent for its feelings in the lamentations he poured forth as dictated by the Spirit of God. Gracious it was of the Lord to allow his afflicted servant this relief, gracious however not to him only, but to others, as surely will be acknowledged some day, when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed, and all the ways of God in the times that will then be past, shall be meditated on to His glory.

The book consists of five chapters, each chapter being a separate poem in itself. The first four poems are alphabetical acrostics, a device of Hebrew poetry found sometimes in the Psalms: see Ps. 25, Ps. 34, Ps. 37, Ps. 111, Ps. 119, Ps. 145. Each verse in chapter 1, 2, 4, begins with a successive letter of the alphabet, as does each stanza of three verses in chap. 3. Unlike some of the alphabetical Psalms the alphabet is complete in all these poems. Twenty-two letters compose the alphabet, so twenty-two verses are found in chapters 1, 2, 4, and sixty-six in chapter 3, but, whilst the arrangement of chapter 1 corresponds to the regular order of the alphabet, in chapters 2, 3, 4, the stanza commencing with pe precedes that commencing with ain, an arrangement not met with elsewhere. The reason of this inversion of the regular order of the alphabet has not been satisfactorily accounted for. The ancient versions, LXX., Vulgate, and Targum of Jonathan, agree with the order of the Hebrew, but the Syriac in each chapter reverses it, placing 2:17, 4:17, 3:49-51 before 2:16, 4:16, 3:46-48. At an early epoch some scribe of the LXX. wrote the letters of the Hebrew alphabet at the commencement of each verse or stanza, to mark that the poems were alphabetical acrostics; but either from ignorance of the Hebrew, or from carelessness, inserted uniformly ain before the pe stanza, and pe before the ain stanza, thus misleading the reader of the Greek as to the alphabetical order in the Hebrew.