Lamentations: Poems and Synesthesia

Being midway through the bible,
I would like to analyze some poetry. I
Bid you stay with me - I will break down
Lamentations and
Explain the meaning of its lines.

Today we look at The Book of Lamentations, an intricate web of five interwoven poems, each of which speaks of the Babylonian exile in a different way. These are the events immediately following the book of Jeremiah, which can be read in 2 Kings.



The first four poems take the form of acrostic poetry. An acrostic poem is one in which the first letter of every line or verse is used to spell or say something, as in the short poem above. Poems 1, 2, and 4 of Lamentations spell out the Hebrew alphabet verse by verse, all 22 letters in order, from aleph to taw. Poem 3 intensifies poetic form, with 3 successive verses devoted to each letter. Poem 5 mimics the number of verses in poems 1, 2, and 4, but does not exhibit an acrostic form. For those of us who cannot read Hebrew, I created a visual display so you can see how the poems sounds.

Poem 1:

________________________

Poem 2:

________________________ 

Poem 3:

________________________

Poem 4:

________________________ 

Poem 5:

________________________ 

Read chronologically (how else are you going to read them?), the series of poems exhibits an intensifying effect through poem 3, before tapering in poems 4 and 5. This creates the sensation of a great buildup of emotion that peters out into ambiguity. Indeed, Lamentations shifts over the course of the poem from mere description in its opening:

How lonely sits the city
that once was full of people!
How like a widow she has become,
she that was great among nations!
She that was a princess among the provinces
has become a vassal.
(Lamentations 1.1)

to an ambiguous closing:

But you, O Lord, reign forever;
your throne endures to all generations.
Why have you forsaken us these many days?
Restore us to yourself, O Lord, that we may be restored;
renew our days as of old -
unless you have utterly rejected us,
and are angry with us beyond measure.
(Lamentations 5.19-22)

This ending question is very troubling. It explicitly doubts the relationship established by the covenant between God and Israel, something that has not been seen before, except perhaps in Job, where it was quickly rebuffed. The end of Lamentations leaves us with an open question. Is God still devoted to Israel? Will he indeed restore his people?

This question may close the work, but in fact it is the thesis of Lamentations itself. Over the course of five poems we view the exile of Jerusalem through the eyes of six different parties.

Lamentations 1
This poem features two narrators, an omniscient narrator in 1-11b and the personified City of Zion (Jerusalem) in 11c-22. After getting a metaphorical sense of Zion's suffering (Zion as virgin daughter, suffering for her uncleanliness), Daughter Zion cries out in her suffering for the metaphorical pains she has suffered both directly by God and by "false lovers."

Lamentations 2
A new narrator describes how the Lord has punished Israel, and mixes metaphor with particular horrors that Israel has suffered:

My eyes are spent with weeping;
my stomach churns;
my bile is poired out on the ground
because of the destruction of my people,
because infants and babes faint
in the streets of the city.
(Lamentations 2.11)

Then in the last two verse the poem reverts back to the voice of daughter Zion:

The young and the old are lying
on the ground in the streets;
my young women and my young men
have fallen by the sword;
in the day of your anger you have killed them,
slaughtering without mercy.

You invited my enemies from all around
as if for a day of festival;
and on the day of the anger of the Lord
no one escaped or surived;
those whom I bore and reared
my enemy has destroyed
(Lamentations 3.21-22)

Zion has clearly suffered, but the most emotional plea fittingly comes in the most poetically dense portion of the book, poem 3.

Lamentations 3
This poem takes the point of view of a male of Jerusalem, who describes the physical manifestations of oppression suffered by the residents of the city:

I am one who has seen affliction
under the rod of God's wrath;
...
He has made my flesh and my skin waste away
and broken my bones;
he has besieged and enveloped me
with bitterness and tribulation;
he has made me sit in darkness
like the dead of long ago.
(Lamentations 3.1; 4-6)

The male speaks for the people, those shot with arrows, those laughed at by their enemies, those afflicted by the siege of Jerusalem. Such is described in the first third of his lament. Then comes the recognition of God, which expands upon the first two poems in praising God's greatness and seeking his protection. Praise of God constitutes the latter two-thirds of the poem.

For the Lord will not reject forever.
Although he causes grief, he will have compassion
according to the abundance of his steadfast love;
for he does not willingly afflict or grieve anyone.
(Lamentations 3.31.33)

The narrator of Lamentations 3 knows that the Lord will one day defend him. He has called out to the Lord, and the Lord has apparently responded to him that his enemies will be judged for their actions. With God's apparent support, perhaps given through the words of Jeremiah or some other prophet, the narrator is confident that the Lord will pay back the deeds of Jerusalem's oppressors and restore his people to their proper place.

Lamentations 4
This note of hope is quickly subdued in the following poem, beginning from the first line:

How the gold has grown dim,
how the pure gold is changed!
The sacred stones lie scattered
at the head of every street
(Lamentations 4.1)

And so goes the rest of the poem, narrated by the community itself. Horrors are recalled, from the thirst of infants to the capture of King Zedekiah to even canibalism:

The hands of compassionate women
have boiled their own children;
they became their food
in the destruction of my people.
(Lamentations 4.10)

It is a truly dire situation, and yet the last two strophes of the poem speak of imminent salvation of God's chosen people.

Rejoice and be glad, O daughter Edom,
you that live in the land of Uz;
but to you also the cup shall pass;
you shall become drunk and strip yourself bare.

The punishment of your iniquity, O daughter Zion, is accomplished,
he will keep you in exile no longer;
but your iniquity, O daughter Edom, he will punish,
he will uncover your sins.
(Lamentations 4.21-22)

These hopeful lines of poetry are significantly briefer than the 45 strophes that praise God in Lamentations 3. Clearly the expectation of salvation is wearing thin by this point, as the eventual reward becomes vague. Indeed, by the end of the next poem, hope will seem to all but disappear.

Lamentations 5
This poem continues to address the Lord, and offers the bleakest picture of Judah's suffering: women raped, skin black from malnutrition, downtrodden people who suffer hunger and thirst. Their hearts are sick and their eyes have grown dim. In light of the circumstances, there is one last question for God:

But you, O Lord, reign forever;
your throne endures to all generations.
Why have you forgotten us completely?
Why have you forsaken us these many days?
Restore us to yourself, O Lord, that we may be restored;
renew our days as of old -
unless you have utterly rejected us,
and are angry with us beyond measure.
(Lamentations 5.19-22)

The closing of the poem - and the Book of Lamentations, reveals the potential for a great shift in Israelite belief. Up until this point, it has been common knowledge that the Lord supports and protects Israel. Now that view is being called into question. Why have they suffered so much and why do they continue to suffer? Will the Lord indeed intervene to save his people? Lamentations asks these very uncomfortable questions, and provides no answer. The bible, which has always praised God's greatness, even in times of oppression, here confronts a very difficult situation, and rather than finding an answer in God, finds no answer at all. The question hangs in the air for history to answer.