APTS BIB508 2006

1
The Book of Lamentations

• APTS - BIB508 - 2006

2
Name

• In Hebrew manuscripts and printed editions the
  book is normally given the title hk'yae, from the
  opening word of chs. i, ii, iv, hk'yae Ah, how!,
  the characteristic opening of the funerral dirge.
  But according to Rabbinic references such as the
  Talmud passage bab. Baba Batra 15a, the older
  name was rather tAnyqi funeral dirge. This
  corresponds to the title given to the book in the
  Greek, Latin and English translations - qrh/voi,
  lamentationes, Lamentations . . . ." Eissfeldt

3
Texts Qumran

• "Four manuscripts - together witnessing to all
  five chapters of Lamentations - were found in the
  caves at Qumran. Cave 3, famous for the
  idiosyncratic Copper Scroll, preserved one
  manuscript (3QLam). A somewhat variant version of
  the book was unearthed in Cave 4 (4QLam).
  Finally, the relatively meager cache of
  twenty-five fragmentary manuscripts found in Cave
  5 produced remnants of two scrolls of
  Lamentations (5QLama and 5QLamb)."

4
Text MT Others

• "The text of Lamentations is fairly well
  preserved, although there are a few
  irregularities in lexical or syntactic usage
  (114 26 322 49)." Berlin
• Greek text has been identified as a
  kaige-recension, so it has been corrected to a
  proto-Masoretic Text.

5
Canon Order

• 1. At Qumran, noncanonical poems allude to
  lamentations.
• 2. In the Jewish threefold scripture order,
  Lamentations is found in the Kethubim, but the
  exact placement varies
• Chronological Lamentations after those labeled
  as written by Solomon, but before the postexilic
  Daniel and Esther.
• Megillot Ruth, Song of Songs, Qoheleth,
  Lamentations, Esther
• Megillot order of festival Song of Songs,
  Ruth, Lamentations, Qoheleth, Esther

6
Authorship

• "Although one very ancient tradition ascribes
  Lamentations to Jeremiah, practically unanimous
  modern critical opinion holds the book to be
  anonymous. Before examining the issue, it is in
  place to observe that the authorship is not
  decisively important for understanding these
  poems of lament, because their author, whoever he
  was, expresses the historical experience of a
  community more than the personal experiences or
  opinions of one individual, and, as emphasized by
  Lanahan (1974), assumes a variety of personae, or
  speaking voices." Hillers

7
Content Context Destruction

• "Chapter 1 focuses on Jerusalem, the destroyed
  city, pictured in her mourning, her shame, and
  her desolation. The tone is one of despair,
  depression, degradation, shame, and guilt. The
  destruction is complete and the reader stands
  among the ruins." Berlin

8
Content Context Destruction

• "Chapter 2 takes the reader back to the moment of
  destruction, with all its physical and
  theological force. The picture is full of anger
  and fury - God's anger at the city and the poet's
  anger at God. The chapter focuses on God, the
  perpetrator of the destruction. The anger of God
  overshadows the guilt of Jerusalem."

9
Content Context Destruction

• "Chapter 3 portrays the process of the exile,
  with its alternating moods of despair and hope.
  The speaker is a lone male, a Joblike figure
  trying to come to terms with what has happened.
  His view is personal but at the same time
  representative of the people."

10
Content Context Destruction

• "Chapter 4 focuses on the people, reliving the
  siege and the suffering that accompanied it - the
  toll it took on the inhabitants of the city. The
  chapter paints a picture of utter degradation."

11
Content Context Destruction

• "Chapter 5 is the prayer of the Judean remnant,
  weakened and impoverished, deprived of king and
  temple, pleading with God not to abandon them
  forever, hoping that the former relationship
  between God and Israel will be renewed."

12
Poetry Acrostics

• "All five poems in Lamentations are formally
  related in some way to the alphabet. This is
  least noticeable in chap. 5, which conforms to
  the alphabet only in having 22 lines, one for
  each letter in the Hebrew alphabet. In chaps. 1
  and 2 each stanza has three lines, and the
  initial word of the first stanza begins with the
  first letter of the alphabet, the second stanza
  begins with a word starting with the second
  letter, and so on through the alphabet. Chapter 4
  follows the same scheme but has two-line stanzas.
  The most elaborate acrostic is chap. 3, with
  three-line stanzas in which each line begins with
  the appropriate letter. . . ." Hillers

13
Poetry Acrostics

• "In the MT, the order of the letters in chaps. 2,
  3 and 4 is different from the usual Hebrew order
  pe comes before 'ayin."
• This has also been found for chap. 1 in 4QLam!

14
Poetry Acrostics

• "It is perhaps a sublime literary touch that the
  poems of this book, which express the
  inexpressible, sue such a formal and rigid style,
  whose controlling structural device is the very
  letters that signify and give shape to language.
  The world order of Lamentations has been
  disrupted no order exists any longer in the real
  world. But as if to counteract this chaos, the
  poet has constructed his own linguistic order
  that marks out graphically for us by the orderly
  progression of the letters of the alphabet."

15
Poetry Aural Effect

• Qinah Meter Although, beginning with Budde, Old
  Testament scholars have argued that there is a
  32 meter that represents a "dirge," but those
  scholars that deny "meter" to Hebrew poetry use
  terms like "rhythm" or syntactic development.
• "Other aural effects include the repetition of
  words and the use of key words, the patterning of
  words and sounds, and plays on words and on
  sounds." Berlin

16
Poetry Grammar

• "We do not always know when the poet of
  Lamentations was speaking of past suffering or of
  suffering yet to come. In many instances, both
  past and future signify the ongoing present. the
  suffering in Lamentations is timeless, and the
  expression of this timelessness seems to have
  been one of the poet's goals." Berlin

17
Theology History

• "N. Gottwald described the key to understanding
  the book's theology to lie in the tension between
  the Deuteronomic faith in a doctrine of
  retribution and reward, and the historical
  reality of adversity. However, most scholars
  doubt whether this is the tension of the book,
  particularly since the writer acknowledges that
  the judgment of the city was deserved." Childs

18
Theology History

• "B. Albrektson saw the tension to lie between
  specific religious concepts, such as the
  inviolability of Jerusalem, and the historical
  realities of Jerusalem's destruction. Although
  Albrektson has made a good case for the presence
  of the Zion tradition, the issue is not resolved
  to what extent such an alleged tension actually
  lay at the centre of the book's concern." Childs

19
Theology Suffering Mourning

• "The poet's purpose in dwelling on suffering is .
  . . to make God see the suffering of his people,
  with the hope that this will provoked a response
  from him." Berlin
• "The first and most central theme of Lamentations
  is mourning. . . . Mourning is not only a set of
  customs relating to death, it is an abstract
  religious concept that had an important place in
  Israelite cultic thought." Berlin

20
Theology Destruction Exile

• "Destruction, according to the covenant, is a
  sign neither of God's abandonment of Israel and
  the cancellation of His obligations to the
  people, nor of God's eclipse by competing powers
  in the cosmos. The Destruction is to be taken,
  rather, as a deserved and necessary punishment
  for sin. . . . As a chastisement, the Destruction
  becomes an expression of God's continuing concern
  for Israel, since the suffering of the
  Destruction expiates the sins that provoked it
  and allows a penitent remnant to survive in a
  rehabilitated and restored relationship with
  God." Mintz

21
Theology Purity Purification

• "Wrongful acts could cause the pollution of the
  nation and of the land of Israel, which could
  also not be "cured" by ritual. There was
  therefore an ultimate expectation of catastrophic
  results for the whole people, the "purging" of
  the land by destruction and exile. Pollution was
  thus thought to be one of the determinants of
  Israel's history, and the concepts of pollution
  and purgation provided a paradigm by which Israel
  could understand and survive the destruction of
  the Temple." Frymer-Kensky