Lamentations

Lamentations was written after the destruction of the city of Jerusalem and exile of its people, so would put it after 587 BC. Because it doesn’t say anything about being restored and the temple being rebuilt (which happened around 520) it was most likely written in those exile years. We can’t miss the writing style,… Read more: Lamentations | Introduction

The opening chapter will bounce back and forth between narration and then commentary by the city of Jerusalem herself, who bemoans the state she has fallen into after the Babylonian siege. Obviously, we have to be careful with the language. It’s emotionally heightened, meaning it’s often exaggerating reality but is rightly communicating how that reality… Read more: Lamentations | Chapter 1

The lament continues. It’s a new poem and the acrostic starts over again. Similar to the last one we have different perspectives throughout the poem. It starts with the narrator in v.1-10. In v.11, the perspective shifts to a personal one, “My eyes are spent with weeping…”, it seems like a prophet of sorts who… Read more: Lamentations | Chapter 2

There is only a single narrator in this one and it seems to be a man who has had this broad judgment of God land upon him (and his descriptions are rough). Yet, there is a turn in v.22, and he reminds himself of the things he knows of God and his character. At the… Read more: Lamentations | Chapter 3

Chapter 4 returns to woe and the rough state of Jerusalem but will end in a fulfillment of their requests. They have asked God up to this point that he see what is happening to them and ultimately make it stop and also that the justice that is coming upon them would also come upon… Read more: Lamentations | Chapter 4

I’ll be honest, this chapter seems oddly placed as we ended the last one with a promise that the punishment has been accomplished and then this one fires back up with a reminder of what has occurred. Either we accept the chapter progression as non-linear (meaning they aren’t intended to “progress” or follow one another… Read more: Lamentations | Chapter 5