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The book at a glance
The poems mourn the destruction of Jerusalem by Babylon in 587 BC: the siege, the famine, the burning of the Temple, the people led away. Tradition, beginning with the Greek Bible, ascribed them to Jeremiah, which is why they stand after his book in Catholic Bibles. The Hebrew text never names him, and the NABRE introduction, with most modern scholars, thinks the poems are anonymous, composed by survivors for communal mourning. Chapters 1–4 are acrostics, each stanza beginning with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet; chapter 5 has twenty-two lines, the number of the letters. Grief is given an order, from A to Z, so that it can be prayed. Jewish tradition reads the book each year on the ninth of Av, the fast that mourns the destruction of both Temples.
Lamentations is lament, not prediction. It looks back on a judgment that has already fallen, the one Jeremiah and Deuteronomy had warned of. Its forward look is the hope of a people who still call God theirs, and the Church has heard in its voice, by liturgical application, the grief of Christ and of his Mother in the Passion. The cards below say which is which.
Key to the labels
How a passage stands
Fulfilled Accomplished in history, above all in Christ.
Unfolding Being worked out now in the life of the Church.
Future Clearly still to come at Christ's return.
Mystery Its meaning or moment is not yet settled.
What kind of passage it is
Prophecy God's word through a prophet, or Christ, about what will come.
Promise A pledge God makes, kept over generations.
Type A person or event that foreshadows Christ or the Church.
Image A picture Scripture returns to and completes at the end.
Apocalypse A vision unveiling history from heaven's side, in symbols.
More on the labels
| Passage | Subject | Standing |
|---|
| 1:1–2 | How solitary sits the city | Fulfilled |
| 1:12 | Is there any pain like my pain? | Unfolding |
| 3:21–33 | New every morning | Unfolding |
| 5:19–22 | Bring us back to you, LORD | Unfolding Future |
The passages
“How solitary sits the city, once filled with people. She who was great among the nations is now like a widow.”
- Reading
- The book opens with the Hebrew word 'ekah, “How,” the cry of a funeral song, and the Jewish name of the book. Jerusalem is a woman, widowed and enslaved: “She weeps incessantly in the night” (1:2). The poets do not hide the cause. Again and again they say the city sinned and the LORD has done what he warned.
- Why fulfilled
- This is not a prediction. It is the warning of the prophets come true, set down by those who lived through it. Its place in a book of prophecy is to show that God's word is serious: the judgment Jeremiah preached for forty years did come.
- See also
- The widowed city is the opposite of the city Revelation sees at the end, “a new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband” (Revelation 21:2). Between the widow and the bride stands the whole work of redemption.
“Come, all who pass by the way, pay attention and see: Is there any pain like my pain, which has been ruthlessly inflicted upon me, With which the LORD has tormented me on the day of his blazing wrath?”
- Reading
- In its first sense Jerusalem speaks, calling out to travelers on the road who look and pass on. In the King James Version the line begins “Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by?”, and in that form it has entered the Church's prayer and music.
- In the liturgy
- For centuries the Church has sung the Lamentations at Tenebrae, the night office of the last three days of Holy Week, with each verse introduced by its Hebrew letter. The grief of the city is placed on the lips of Christ on the Cross, and of his Mother standing by it. At the Cross, Matthew records, “Those passing by reviled him, shaking their heads” (Matthew 27:39; compare Lamentations 2:15). This is a liturgical application, not the literal sense: the poet was not predicting the Passion. The Church hears in the abandoned city's cry the pain of the one who took the city's sin on himself, and that is why the verse is unfolding rather than fulfilled. Every Holy Week it is spoken again, and every passerby is asked to stop.
“The LORD's acts of mercy are not exhausted, his compassion is not spent; They are renewed each morning—great is your faithfulness!”
- Reading
- Chapter 3 is the center of the book, and its speaker is one man: “I am one who has known affliction under the rod of God's anger” (3:1). For twenty verses he describes darkness, walls and bitterness. Then he turns: “But this I will call to mind; therefore I will hope” (3:21). What he calls to mind is not a change in his situation but the character of God. “The LORD is my portion, I tell myself, therefore I will hope in him” (3:24). “It is good to hope in silence for the LORD's deliverance” (3:26). “For the Lord does not reject forever” (3:31).
- Unfolding
- This is the hope of the whole book, and it does not wait for the ruins to be rebuilt. The NABRE introduction notes that passages from this chapter are often used on Holy Thursday or Good Friday. Christians have heard in this afflicted man, who offers “one's cheek to be struck” (3:30), a figure of Christ in his Passion, and in his hope the hope of Holy Saturday, waiting in silence for the morning. The mercies are still new each morning for anyone who calls them to mind.
“Bring us back to you, LORD, that we may return: renew our days as of old.”
- Reading
- The last poem is a communal prayer. It begins from the one thing that has not fallen: “But you, LORD, are enthroned forever; your throne stands from age to age” (5:19). Then it asks honestly, “Why have you utterly forgotten us, forsaken us for so long?” (5:20). The book ends without an answer, on a line of grief (5:22). In synagogue reading, verse 21 is repeated after the last verse so that the book does not end in sorrow.
- Unfolding
- The prayer asks God to do the turning: “Bring us back to you, … that we may return.” Conversion begins as his gift. The Church makes the same prayer in every season of repentance.
- Future
- The answer to the question of 5:20 is the end of Revelation: the throne that stands forever is seen again (Revelation 4:2), and from it a voice says, “Behold, God's dwelling is with the human race” (21:3).
Still to come on this pageFurther passages to add: the breach “vast as the sea” and the call to pour out the heart like water (2:13, 19), the passersby who hiss and wag their heads (2:15; compare
Matthew 27:39), the man who sits alone and in silence (3:28–30), and “The LORD's anointed—our very lifebreath!” (4:20), which St. Augustine, reading the Greek, applied to Christ (
City of God 18.33).
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