Theopedia

Book of Lamentations

“The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”

— Lamentations 3:22-23 (ESV)

Overview

The Book of Lamentations is a series of five poems mourning the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple by the Babylonians. The English Bible places it immediately after Jeremiah, treating it as an appendix to his prophecy, though the traditional Hebrew ordering groups it differently.1 Its Hebrew title, Echah (“How”), is drawn from the word that opens the book.2

Author and Date

Lamentations does not name its own author, but ancient testimony has unanimously ascribed it to Jeremiah, a judgment Barrows finds confirmed by the book’s internal character and style.2 The book reads as the work of an eyewitness to the desolation of Judah and Jerusalem at the hands of the Chaldeans, writing while the memory of that catastrophe was still raw.2 This places its composition shortly after Jerusalem’s fall in 586 BC, within the lifetime and circumstances of the prophet to whom it has traditionally been attributed.

Historical and Literary Context

The book was written “in view of the desolation of Judah and Jerusalem by the Chaldeans, by an eye-witness of all the unutterable miseries connected with that catastrophe.”2 It laments, in the language of the deepest anguish, the city’s ruin along with the slaughter and captivity of its people, piling up image after image of horror at what the Babylonian siege and conquest had done.2 Yet the poems are not simply a catalogue of atrocity: throughout them, Barrows observes, “the feelings of a tender-hearted and compassionate man, of a sincere patriot, and of a devout worshipper of Jehovah” appear “blended together.”2

Structure

Lamentations is built from five poems, one per chapter, each complete in itself but bound together as parts of a single theme.3 The first, second, and fourth chapters are acrostics: each contains twenty-two verses, one for every letter of the Hebrew alphabet in order, with the first, second, and fourth chapters differing chiefly in how many clauses each verse carries.3 The third chapter carries the acrostic pattern to its most elaborate point, with sixty-six short, single-clause verses arranged in sets of three per letter, so that the alphabetic structure “reaches its culmination” at the book’s structural center.3 The fifth chapter returns to twenty-two verses but drops the acrostic ordering altogether.4 In content, the first, second, and fourth chapters mainly describe Jerusalem’s calamities; the third shifts to the voice of one who represents the pious remnant, professing confidence in God and interceding for his suffering people; and the fifth is Zion’s own prayer to God over what has befallen her.4

Major Themes

Grief that does not deny God’s justice. Even at its most anguished, Lamentations refuses to treat Jerusalem’s fall as senseless suffering. Barrows notes that the book “ascribes righteousness to God, and acknowledges the manifold sins of the rulers and people as the cause of the overwhelming calamities that had come upon them.”5 The poems themselves make the same admission in their own voice: “The LORD is in the right, for I have rebelled against his word” (Lam. 1:18). Judgment and lament stand together throughout the book, neither one softened for the sake of the other.

Hope amid judgment. Alongside its grief, the book holds that Jerusalem’s covenant God has not abandoned her even in her lowest hour. Barrows draws this out as the book’s own lesson for later readers: “It teaches us that in the midnight of Zion’s adversity her covenant God is with her, and that she has an indestructible life.”3 The hope does not undo the judgment; it is spoken from within the ruin the book has just described, before any deliverance has come.

Lamentations 3:22-23 as the book’s theological center. At the structural midpoint of the book’s most elaborately patterned chapter stands its best-known declaration: “The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness” (Lam. 3:22-23). Thomas Watson reaches for this verse when urging Christians to submit their own will to God under affliction, calling to mind how constantly God’s mercy comes to his people: “the Honey-comb of Mercy hath continually drop’d upon us, Lam. 3.23, His Mercies are new every Morning.”6 Set at the center of the poem where the acrostic form itself is most tightly wound, the verse turns the book from complaint toward trust without retracting anything the surrounding chapters have said about the severity of God’s judgment.

Related Doctrines

Multimedia

References

  1. Elijah Porter Barrows, Companion to the Bible (New York: American Tract Society, 1867), 294. ↩

  2. Barrows, 314. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  3. Barrows, 315. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  4. Barrows, 316. ↩ ↩2

  5. Barrows, 314-315. ↩

  6. Thomas Watson, A Body of Practical Divinity (London: Thomas Parkhurst, 1692), in his exposition of “Thy Will Be Done” in the Lord’s Prayer: “the Honey-comb of Mercy hath continually drop’d upon us, Lam. 3.23. His Mercies are new every Morning.” ↩