Old Testament

Lamentations

Lamentations is five poems of grief written after the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and its temple in 586 BC. They mourn the city as a widow, confess that the LORD has done what He warned because His people sinned, and describe the horrors of siege and exile without softening them. At the center stands a confession of hope, that the LORD's mercies are new every morning (), and the book ends with a prayer for restoration that is still waiting for its answer. It belongs in the Bible because it gives God's people words for grief and confession when all seems lost, and it holds on to God's faithfulness inside judgment.

Author: The poems do not name their author. Jewish and Christian tradition, reflected in the Greek translation's heading, attributed them to Jeremiah, who witnessed the fall and is said to have composed laments (2 Chronicles 35:25); many scholars think the author was another eyewitness, or that more than one poet contributed.
Audience: The survivors in ruined Judah and the exiles in Babylon, who needed to grieve, to understand why the disaster came, and to know whether God had cast them off for good.
When: Soon after the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BC (2 Kings 25:8–10), while the memory of the siege was still raw. The poems do not mention the return from exile.
Where: Jerusalem and Judah in ruins: empty roads to Zion, a burned temple, starving children in the streets, and foxes on Mount Zion (5:18).
Genre: Lamentations is lament poetry, close to a funeral song for a city. Four of its five poems are acrostics, each stanza beginning with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet; chapter 3 triples the pattern, and chapter 5 keeps twenty-two lines without the alphabet. Many scholars hear in much of it a limping rhythm, a longer line answered by a shorter one, suited to mourning. Read it as poetry that gives order to overwhelming grief, notice who is speaking, and do not rush past the pain to the hope.

Shape of the book

The Widowed City · ch 1A narrator describes Jerusalem as a widow with no one to comfort her, then Zion herself speaks, confessing that the LORD is righteous and she has rebelled.
The Day of the LORD's Anger · ch 2The LORD has acted like an enemy, tearing down His own sanctuary, while false prophets failed to expose sin; the poet urges Zion to pour out her heart to God.
The Man Who Has Seen Affliction · ch 3At the book's center one sufferer describes God's hand against him, then remembers that the LORD's loving devotion never ends, calls the people to repent, and recalls being heard from the pit.
Gold Grown Dim · ch 4The siege in close detail: starving infants, ruined nobles, guilty prophets and priests, a king captured, and a first word that Zion's punishment is complete.
Remember, O LORD · ch 5A community prayer lists the miseries of life under occupation, confesses sin, declares that the LORD reigns forever, and asks to be restored, ending on an open question.

Themes

Grief Without Pretending. The book names what happened: empty streets, captured children, mothers eating their own children in the siege (; ). It does not hurry to explain or console. The repeated cry that there is no one to comfort her (, 9, 16, 17, 21) is allowed to stand.
The LORD's Judgment on His Own People. Babylon is only the instrument: 'The LORD has done what He planned' (), carrying out what He warned through Moses (; ). The poems confess sin plainly (; ; ) and blame prophets and priests who misled the people (; ).
Hope From Remembering Who God Is. In the middle of the darkness the speaker calls to mind the LORD's loving devotion: 'They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness!' (). Hope does not deny the ruin; it rests on God's character, for He does not willingly afflict ().
Prayer That Waits. The book moves from description to petition, ending with 'Restore us to Yourself, O LORD, so we may return' () and a final question whether God has utterly rejected His people (). It teaches that honest prayer may end without seeing the answer yet.

Where Christ is

The New Testament does not quote Lamentations, so its connections to Christ are echoes and fulfillments of its hopes rather than direct prophecies. The book shows what the day of the LORD's anger looks like; the gospel says Christ bore that anger for His people. Its sufferer mocked and struck, its fallen 'anointed of the LORD,' and its prayer for restoration all find answers in Jesus.

Is It Nothing to You, All Who Pass By?. Echo. Zion asks passersby whether any sorrow is like hers (), and onlookers shake their heads at the ruined city (). At the cross those passing by shook their heads at Jesus, who wept over Jerusalem as He foresaw its second destruction. (; ; ; )
The Man of Affliction. Echo. The sufferer of is walled in, mocked all day, filled with bitterness, and offers his cheek to the one who strikes (, 30). Jesus was mocked, struck and spat on, offered wine mixed with gall, and bore God's judgment for others. (; ; ; ; )
The LORD's Anointed Captured. Fulfillment of a hope. 'The LORD's anointed,' the king of David's line, was caught in the enemy's pits (), and the failure of that line sharpened Israel's hope for a true Anointed One. Peter proclaims Jesus as David's descendant raised and enthroned. (; ; )
Mercies New Every Morning. Echo. The loving devotion and compassion of are shown in full when God, in kindness and love, sends His Son to save. Christ is the clearest proof that the Lord does not reject forever (). (; ; )
Restore Us So We May Return. Fulfillment. The final prayer () echoes and looks toward the new covenant God promised there, which Hebrews says Christ mediates. The missing comforter is answered when God says comfort to His people and Simeon finds the consolation of Israel in the infant Jesus. (; ; ; ; ; )

Reading well, key terms and common misreadings

Read it well

Read 2 Kings 25 and Jeremiah 39 and 52 first. They give the history the poems grieve.
Notice the acrostic shape, which holds grief within order, and the change of voice between a narrator, Zion, the man of chapter 3, and 'we' in chapter 5.
Read 3:21–33 in its place, between the darkness of 3:1–20 and the confession of 3:40–47. The hope shines brighter against the night around it.
Compare the curses of Deuteronomy 28 and Leviticus 26 with the scenes here. The poems show those warnings carried out.
Know that Jewish communities read Lamentations each year on the fast of the Ninth of Av, remembering the destruction of the temple.

Key terms

How אֵיכָה (ekah) — The cry of lament that opens chapters 1, 2 and 4 and gives the book its Hebrew name. It is the opening sound of a funeral song.
Daughter of Zion בַּת צִיּוֹן (bat Tsiyon) — A poetic name for Jerusalem and its people pictured as a woman, here a widow, a captive and a mourner (1:6; 2:1; 4:22).
Loving devotion חֶסֶד (chesed) — God's steadfast covenant love. Because of it 'we are not consumed' (3:22), and the speaker builds his hope on it at the center of the book.
Portion חֵלֶק (cheleq) — An allotted share, used of a family's land. With land and temple lost, the speaker says the LORD Himself is his portion (3:24).
The LORD's anointed מְשִׁיחַ יְהוָה (meshiach YHWH) — The king of David's line, here Zedekiah, captured as he fled (4:20; 2 Kings 25:4–7). The word mashiach is the root of 'Messiah.'

Easy to misread

Lifting 3:22–23 out as a cheerful slogan. The words are spoken from inside ruin and judgment, and they mean most when read with the bitter verses around them.
Treating the disaster as random misfortune. The book insists that the LORD did what He planned and that the people had sinned (1:18; 2:17), even while it laments the suffering honestly.
Assuming every sufferer is being punished for his own sin. Lamentations speaks of a covenant nation judged after long warning; it also shows children and the innocent caught in the ruin, and it never pretends the suffering was evenly deserved.
Expecting a tidy ending. The last verse leaves a question open (5:22). Scripture's answer comes later, in the return from exile and above all in Christ.

Further reading: David Guzik, Enduring Word · Matthew Henry on CCEL · BibleProject overview video