The Sumerian City Laments and the Book of Lamentations

The city of Uruk is probably to be identified with biblical Erech (Gen 10:10).

For a recent review of the city lament see: N. Samet, The Lamentation over the Destruction of Ur (MC 18; Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2014), pp. 1−31. A convenient online edition of all the currently known Sumerian City Laments can be found in the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature. References to Sumerian City Laments follow the above edition.

The following is an abbreviated and somewhat simplified version of my comparative analysis of the City Lament genre in Sumer and in the Bible. For the full discussion see: N. Samet, “Sumerian City Laments and the Book of Lamentations: Toward a Comparative Theological Study,” Shnaton: An Annual for Biblical and Near Eastern Studies 21 (2012), pp. 91‒110 (Hebrew).

A prominent advocate of this theory is the great thinker and biblical scholar Yehezkel Kaufman. See his History of the Religion of Israel, Tel Aviv 1936, vol. 1, pp. 221–558 [Hebrew].

The Sumerian Laments do recognize human enemies as well, referred to as the agents of the destruction, summoned by Enlil. In many cases, they are also identified with another mythological entity, the divine storm which destroys the city.

An only exception to this description occurs in the Nippur Lament, where the city’s patron god, Enlil, is also the chief of the divine council. Therefore, in the Nippur Lament presents a theological picture that is more similar to the biblical one.

I assume that the original version read נצב בימינו כצר.

Note that […] means a lacuna (=a broken part) in the original tablet.

I am oversimplifying here. For a more detailed analysis of the theological assumptions in Lamentations, see Marc Brettler’s TABS essay, “Relating to God in Calamity.“ See also, E. L. Greenstein, “The Wrath at God in the Book of Lamentations,” in The Problem of Evil and Its Symbols in Jewish and Christian Tradition (eds. G. Reventlow and Y. Hoffman; London: A&C Black, 2004), 31−42.