The Book of Lamentations

A Humiliated People

Each of the five lamentations uses striking images to describe a national tragedy and the anguish of a humiliated people.

The fall of Jerusalem under the battering of Nebuchadnezzar was the darkest day in the entire biblical history and has already been frequently called to mind in the preceding books of the Bible. The population had been deported, the city razed to the ground, the temple destroyed. Jerusalem is nothing but a heap of ruins in which a few believers live on like ghosts. Crushed by events, they have time to think.

Their eyes are opened to the preceding moral and spiritual decadence of the people. Is not their present lot to be seen, as perhaps, the well-deserved punishment for betraying the covenant? Their funeral lament becomes an examination of conscience, a cry of repentance, a cry for mercy, a plea for forgiveness.

In the present confusion, a memory, only one, persists: the Lord is always there, his power remains unaffected despite the wrongs done by his people. He does not bear grudges forever. Now that his justice has been seen, the people must learn to discover his mercy; he will allow his mercy to take over. Out of discouragement a confident prayer already arises, a prayer marked by invincible trust.

These sorrowful songs have consoled and strengthened many who are afflicted. The Church used to use them in the liturgy of the last three days of Holy Week, in celebrating the passion of Christ, who carries the hope of the world.

Jeremiah was a devastated witness of the destruction of Jerusalem. An ancient tradition attributes these songs of mourning and unobtrusive hope to him, but many signs contradict the attribution.

Songs so carefully developed are not in keeping with the spontaneous genius of the great prophet; in fact, each lamentation is an acrostic poem, that is, each verse begins with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet in alphabetical order. We will rather have to say that these songs of mourning were composed by Jews who remained on the scene after the fall and during the years following the destruction.