LAMENTATIONS

VI. LAMENTATIONS

In the Greek and Latin Bibles there are five songs of lament bearing the name of Jeremias, which follow the Book of the Prophecy of Jeremias. In the Hebrew these are entitled Kinôth. from their elegiac character, or the 'Ekhah songs after the first word of the first, second, and fourth elegies; in Greek they are called Threnoi, in Latin they are known as Lamentationes.

A. Position and Genuineness of Lamentations

The superscription to Lamentations in the Septuagint and other versions throws light on the historical occasion of their production and on the author: "And it came to pass, after Israel was carried into captivity, and Jerusalem was desolate, that Jeremias the prophet sat weeping, and mourned with this lamentation over Jerusalem, and with a sorrowful mind, sighing and moaning, he said". The inscription was not written by the author of Lamentations, one proof of this being that it does not belong to the alphabetical form of the elegies. It expresses, however, briefly, the tradition of ancient times which is also confirmed both by the Targum and the Talmud. To a man like Jeremias, the day on which Jerusalem became a heap of ruins was not only a day of national misfortune, as was the day of the fall of Troy to the Trojan, or that of the destruction of Carthage to the Carthaginian, it was also a day of religious inanition. For, in a religious sense, Jerusalem had a peculiar importance in the history of salvation, as the footstool of Jahweh and as the scene of the revelation of God and of the Messias. Consequently, the grief of Jeremias was personal, not merely a sympathetic emotion over the sorrow of others, for he had sought to prevent the disaster by his labours as a prophet in the streets of the city. All the fibres of his heart were bound up with Jerusalem; he was now himself crushed and desolate. Thus Jeremias more than any other man was plainly called–it may be said, driven by an inner force–to lament the ruined city as threnodist of the great penitential period of the Old Covenant. He was already prepared by his lament upon the death of King Josias (II Par., xxxv, 25) and by the elegiac songs in the book of his prophecies (cf. xiii, 20-27, a lament over Jerusalem). The lack of variety in the word-forms and in the construction of the sentences, which, it is claimed, does not accord with the character of the style of Jeremias, may be explained as a poetic peculiarity of this poetic book. Descriptions such as those in i, 13-15, or iv, 10, seem to point to an eye witness of the catastrophe, and the literary impression made by the whole continually recalls Jeremias. To this conduce the elegiac tone of the Lamentations, which is only occasionally interrupted by intermediate tones of hope; the complaints against false prophets and against the striving after the favour of foreign nations; the verbal agreements with the Book of Prophecy of Jeremias; finally the predilection for closing a series of thoughts with a prayer warm from the heart–cf. iii, 19-21, 64-66, and chapter v, which, like a Miserere Psalm of Jeremias, forms a close to the five lamentations. The fact that in the Hebrew Bible the Kinôth was removed, as a poetic work, from the collection of prophetic books and placed among the Kethúhîm, or Hagiographa, cannot be quoted as a decisive argument against its Jeremiac origin, as the testimony of the Septuagint, the most important witness in the forum of Biblical criticism, must in a hundred other cases correct the decision of the Masorah. Moreover, the superscription of the Septuagint seems to presuppose a Hebrew original.

B. Technical Form of the Poetry of Lamentations

(1) In the first four laments the Kînah measure is used in the construction of the lines. In this measure each line is divided into two unequal members having respectively three and two stresses, as for example in the introductory first three lines of the book.

(2) In all five elegies the construction of the verses follows an alphabetical arrangement. The first, second, fourth, and fifth laments are each composed of twenty-two verses, to correspond with the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet; the third lament is made up of three times twenty-two verses. In the first, second, and fourth elegies each verse begins with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet, the letters following in order, as the first verse begins with Aleph, the second with Beth, etc.; in the third elegy every fourth verse begins with a letter of the alphabet in due order. Thus, with a few exceptions and changes (Pê, the seventeenth, precedes Ayin the sixteenth letter), the Hebrew alphabet is formed from the initial letters of the separate verses. How easily this alphabetical method can curb the spirit and logic of a poem is most clearly shown in the third lament, which, besides, had probably in the beginning the same structure as the others, a different initial letter to each of the original verses; it was not until later that a less careful writer developed each verse into three by means of ideas taken from Job and other writers.

(3) As to the structure of the strophe, it is certain that the principle followed in some cases is the change of the person of the subject as speaker or one addressed. The first elegy is divided into a lament over Sion in the third person (verses 1-11), and a lament of Sion over itself (verses 12-22). In the first strophe Sion is the object, in the second, a strophe of equal length, the subject of the elegy. In 11c, according to the Septuagint, the third person should be used. In the second elegy, also, the intention seems to be, with the change of strophe, to change from the third person to the second, and from the second to the first person. In verses 1-8 there are twenty-four members in the third person; in 13-19 twenty-one in the second person, while in 20-22, a strophe in the first person, the lament closes in a monologue. In the third lament, as well, the speech of a single subject in the first person alternates with the speech of several persons represented by "we" and with colloquy; verses 40-47 are clearly distinguished by their subject "we" from the preceding strophe, in which the subject is one individual, and from the following strophe in the first person singular in verses 48-54, while the verses 55-66 represent a colloquy with Jahweh. The theory of the writer, that in the structure of Hebrew poetry the alternation of persons and subjects is a fixed principle in forming strophes, finds in Lamentations its strongest confirmation.

(4) In the structure of the five elegies regarded as a whole, Zenner has shown that they rise in a steady and exactly measured progression to a climax. In the first elegy there are two monologues from two different speakers. In the second elegy the monologue develops into an animated dialogue. In the third and fourth elegies the cry of lamentation is louder still, as more have joined in the lament, and the solitary voice has been replaced by a choir of voices. In the firth lament a third choir is added. Literary criticism finds in the dramatic construction of the book a strong argument for the literary unity of Lamentations.

C. Liturgical Use of Lamentations

The Lamentations have received a peculiar distinction in the Liturgy of the Church in the Office of Passion Week. If Christ Himself designated His death as the destruction of a temple, "he spoke of the temple of his body" (John, ii, 19-21), then the Church surely has a right to pour out her grief over His death in those Lamentations which were sung over the ruins of the temple destroyed by the sins of the nation.

For a general introduction to Jeremias and Lamentations see the Biblical Introduction of CORNELY, VIGOUROUX, GIROT, DRIVER, CORNILL, STRACK. For special questions of introduction: CHEYNE, Jeremiah (1888); MARTZ, Der Prophet Jeremias von Anatot (1889); ERBT, Jeremia und seine Zeit (Göttingen, 1902); GILLIES, Jeremiah, the Man and His Message (London, 1907); RAMSAY, Studies in Jeremiah (London, 1907); WORKMAN, The Text of Jeremiah (Edinburgh, 1889); STREANE, The Double Text of Jeremiah (Cambridge, 1896); SCHOLZ, Der masoretische Text und die Septuagintaübersetzung des B. Jeremias (Ratisbon, 1875); FRANKL, Studien über die LXX und Peschito zu Jeremia (1873); NETELER, Gliederung der B. Jeremias (Münster, 1870). Commentaries on Jeremias issued in the last decades.–Catholic: SCHOLZ (Würzburg, 1880); TROCHON (Paris, 1883); KNABENBAUER (Paris, 1889); SCHNEEDORFER (Vienna, 1903). Protestant: PAYNE SMITH in the Speaker's Commentary (London, 1875); CHEYNE in SPENCE, Commentary (London, 1883-85); BALL (New York, 1890); GIESEBRECHT in NOWACK, Handkommentar (Göttingen, 1894); DUHM in MARTI, Kurzer Hand-Commentar (Tübingen and Leipzig, 1901); DOUGLAS (London, 1903); ORELLI (Munich, 1905). Commentaries on Lamentations:–Catholic: SEISSENBERGER (Ratisbon, 1872); TROCHON (Paris, 1878); SCHÖNFELDER (Munich, 1887); KNABENBAUER (Paris, 1891); MINOCCHI (Rome, 1897); SCHNEEDORFER (Vienna, 1903); ZENNER, Beiträge zur Erklärung der Klagelieder (Freiburg im Br., 1905). Protestant: RAABE (Leipzig, 1880); OETTLI (Nördlingen, 1889); LÖHR (Göttingen, 1891); IDEM in NOWACK, Handkommentar (Göttingen, 1893); BUDDE in MARTI Kurzer Hand-Commentar (Freiburg im Br., 1898). For monographs see the latest commentaries and the bibliographies in the Biblical periodicals.

M. Faulhaber

Transcribed by W. G. Kofron

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VIII

Nihil Obstat, October 1, 1910. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor

Imprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York

The Catholic Encyclopedia: NewAdvent.com