Jeremiah and Lamentations

Jeremiah and the Jeremiah-like voice in Lamentations provide immediate, insider views of Jerusalem’s decline and fall. Jeremiah’s laments give prophetic authority to anguished outcry as a mode of prayer. The highly structured poems of Lamentations belong to the ancient Near Eastern genre of lament for a city—a transcultural tradition that continues in Mahmoud Darwish’s twentieth-century poem “Silence for Gaza.” The acrostic poems of Lamentations, which constitute the most prolonged, intense expression of grief and shock in the Bible, force readers to reckon with the question of theodicy, God’s justice. Several literary features of this Hebrew poetry may also contribute to the work of reclaiming hope.