Where Are God’s Tears in Lamentations?

See, e.g., Nancy C. Lee, Lyrics of Lament: From Tragedy to Transformation (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010).

Gershom Scholem, “On Lament and Lamentation,” trans. from German Lina Barouch and Paula Schwebel, Jewish Studies Quarterly 21 (2014): 4–12 [p.7].

See Paul Joyce, “Lamentations and the Grief Process: A Psychological Reading,” Biblical Interpretation 1 (1993), pp. 304-20. Joyce references and applies the well-known theories of Yorick Spiegel and Elisabeth Kübler-Ross concerning the stages of mourning and dying.

Mourning can entail anger as well. See ibid.; also F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, Lamentations (Interpretation; Louisville: John Knox Press, 1989), pp. 36-41. We should not be surprised to find grief, a process beyond language, and anger, taking the form of accusation, intermixed in a work of lamentation. In fact, the larger part of the biblical book of Lamentations is grievance and complaint, wagging a finger of indictment against the God who would so mercilessly, so disproportionately, rain his wrath down on his people. See Edward L. Greenstein, “The Wrath at God in the Book of Lamentations,” in The Problem of Evil and Its Symbols in Jewish and Christian Tradition, ed. Henning G. Reventlow and Yair Hoffman (London-New York: T & T Clark International/Continuum, 2004), pp. 29-42.

See Edward L. Greenstein, “The Book of Lamentations: Response to Destruction or Ritual of Rebuilding?” in Religious Responses to Political Crisis, ed. Henning G. Reventlow and Yair Hoffman (London-New York: T & T Clark International, 2008), pp. 52-71.

Several different voices of lamentation can be found in Eikha, These voices may even seem to be in dialogue or debate. See my “Voices in Lamentations: Dialogues in Trauma,” TheTorah.com (2015). Although tradition identifies the author of Lamentations as the more or less contemporaneous prophet Jeremiah, there are many reasons to disavow this tradition, not least of which is the poet’s negative views of the prophets (see 2:9; 4:13). Almost any modern commentary will enumerate the reasons. Even the traditionalist commentary of Yael Ziegler (Lamentations: Faith in a Turbulent World [Jerusalem: Maggid, 2021], pp. 3-7), takes an ambivalent position. However, the speakers in the book are not the author—there are several speakers, including some females.

Translations are my own unless otherwise noted.

See, e.g., Piotr Michalowski, The Lamentation over the Destruction of Sumer and Ur (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1989), pp. 1-3.

The five laments are over Ur, Sumer and Ur, Nippur, Uruk, and Eridu. They are all available in English editions. For a survey, see Willam W. Hallo, “Lamentations and Prayers in Sumer and Akkad,” in Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, ed. Jack M. Sasson (4 vols.; New York: Scribner’s, 1995), vol.3, pp. 1871-1881. For more detail, see Nili Samet, The Lamentation over the Destruction of Ur (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2014), pp. 1-13. For an overview of the city lament genre in the ancient Near East and in the Bible, see Edward L. Greenstein, “Lamentation and Lament in the Hebrew Bible,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Elegy, ed. Karen Weisman (Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 67-84.

Samet, The Lamentation, p. 57. Cf. from the Lamentation over the Destruction of Sumer and Ur, line 380: “Laments sounded all along its city wall”; Michalowski, The Lamentation, p. 61.

For analysis of the parallels, without concluding that there is a direct relationship, see F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, Weep, O Daughter of Zion: A Study of the City-Lament Genre in the Hebrew Bible (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1993). Editor’s note: See also, Nili Samet, “The Sumerian City Laments and the Book of Lamentations,” TheTorah (2015). For the argument that Lamentations is more like a cultic lament than a city lament, see Uri Gabbay, “The Genre of Lamentations,” TheTorah (2017).

The holy city and its temple (see, e.g., Isa. 66:1).

It is striking that, in contrast to the Mesopotamian laments, Eikha never mentions the agency of Babylonia. The mention of Edom in Lam. 4:21-22 alludes to an apparent scavenging role in the wake of the destruction; but to examine this requires a lengthy and detailed discussion.

The people is likened to a horned animal, like a gazelle, whose pride and beauty are dashed with the removal of its horns.

By holding back his saving power, he allowed the enemy to do as it pleased.

Literally, “stepped” on the bow, holding it steady as he pulled back the string.

The Temple.

See the classic essay by Samuel Noah Kramer, “The Weeping Goddess: Sumerian Prototypes of the Mater Dolorosa,” Biblical Archaeologist 46 (1983), pp. 69-80. For women as keeners in the Bible and in other cultures, see, e.g., Nancy C. Lee, The Singers of Lamentations: Cities under Siege, from Jerusalem to Sarajevo (Leiden: Brill, 2002)—and see further below.

Samet, The Lamentation, p. 67.

Ibid., p. 63.

See further Alan Mintz, Ḥurban: Responses to Catastrophe in Hebrew Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), pp. 49-83. For the translation and discussion of many of the pertinent passages, see David Stern, Parables in Midrash: Narrative and Exegesis in Rabbinic Literature (Cambridge, MA-London: Harvard University Press, 1991), pp. 24-34. For translations of several lengthy passages from Midrash Eikha Rabba, see David G. Roskies (ed.), The Literature of Destruction: Jewish Responses to Catastrophe (Philadelphia-New York-Jerusalem: Jewish Publication Society, 1988), pp. 51-60. For extensive literary and thematic analysis of this midrashic work, see Galit Hasan-Rokem, The Web of Life: Folklore and Midrash in Rabbinic Literature, trans. Batya Stein (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000; Hebrew original published 1996).

From Midrash Eikha Rabba, Petiḥta 24 (ed. Solomon Buber, p. 25). This vocalized text is taken from Sefaria.

This excerpt is also taken from Midrash Eikha Rabba, Petiḥta 24 (ed. Solomon Buber, pp. 24-25). The vocalized Hebrew text is taken from Sefaria.

For the centrality of intertextual interpretation in midrash, see Daniel Boyarin, Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash (Bloomington-Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990). Such readings are often if not usually in both directions. See, e.g., Graham Allen, Intertextuality, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2011).

For this theological function of midrash, see, e.g., Yochanan Muffs, The Personhood of God: Biblical Theology, Human Faith, and the Divine Image (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights, 2005).