Voices in Lamentations: Dialogues in Trauma

Few modern scholars ascribe the authorship of the Scroll to Jeremiah, for reasons of content and style. R. Abraham Ibn Ezra, the 12^th century exegete, already questioned the attribution (in the introduction to his commentary). Lamentations cannot be the scroll that was written by Jeremiah but was burned according to Jeremiah 36, as the ancient sages maintained, because it neither constitutes the prophecies of reproach that are referenced in verse 2 nor mentions Babylonia or its king, which are referenced in verse 29.

See, for example, William F. Lanahan, “The Speaking Voice in the Book of Lamentations,” Journal of Biblical Literature 93 (1974), pp. 41-49; Alan Mintz, “The Rhetoric of Lamentations and the Representation of Catastrophe,” Prooftexts 2 (1982), pp. 1-17; Charles William Miller, “Reading Voices: Personification, Dialogism, and the Reader of Lamentations 1,”Biblical Interpretation 9 (2001), pp. 393-408; Elizabeth Boase, “Lamentations as Dialogic Text,” The Fulfillment of Doom?: The Dialogic Interaction between the Book of Lamentations and the Pre-Exilic/Early Exilic Prophetic Literature (New York-London: T & T Clark, 2006), pp. 203-38.

Marc Brettler, in his TABS essay, “Relating to God in Calamity,” points to theological differences between the chapters as well. Brettler suggests a difference between chapter 1, which pictures God justly punishing Israel for its sins, and chapter 2, which pictures a God carried away by his wrath.

For example, in verse 7 the speakers blame their predicament on the sins of their ancestors, and in verse 16 they confess to having sinned themselves.

Compare Cornelius Houk, “Multiple Poets in Lamentations,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 30 (2005), p. 116. For a basic introduction to Lamentations, see Adele Berlin’s TABS essay, “An Introduction to Lamentations.”

Probably their children; see Hos. 9:16, where מחמדי בטנם  denotes “the precious things of their wombs”; see further Delbert R. Hillers, Lamentations, rev. ed.,  Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday, 1992), pp. 87-88.

For a survey of views, see Kim Lan Nguyen, Chorus in the Dark: The Voices of the Book of Lamentations (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2013), pp. 125-53.

For example, R. Abraham Ibn Ezra; Hillers, Lamentations, p. 122.

For example, Adele Berlin, Lamentations, Old Testament Library (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2004), pp. 84-85, 88.

So Jacob Klein, in ‘Olam ha-Tanakh: Megillot (Tel Aviv: Davidson-Itti, 1997), pp. 137-38 (in Hebrew).

These scholars maintain this view even when the voice becomes plural in verse 41. For example, Robert Gordis, The Song of Songs and Lamentations: A Study, Modern Translation, and Commentary, rev. ed. (New York: Ktav, 1974), pp. 171-72; Berlin, Lamentations, p. 84.

For example, Nancy C. Lee, The Singers of Lamentations: Cities under Siege, from Ur to Jerusalem to Sarajevo (Leiden: Brill, 2002), pp. 164, 168, 180-81.

One may interpret the triple alphabetic acrostic in chapter 3 as a sign of its polyvocality.

Compare, for example, Gordis, The Song of Songs and Lamentations, p. 174; Berlin, Lamentations, p. 85; Nguyen,Chorus in the Dark, p. 131.

Compare, for example, Gordis, The Song of Songs and Lamentations, p. 175; Berlin, Lamentations, p. 85.

See, for example, Beau Harris and Carleen Mandolfo, “The Silent God in Lamentations,” Interpretation 67 (2013), pp. 133-43.

 קָרַ֙בְתָּ֙ בְּי֣וֹם אֶקְרָאֶ֔ךָּ אָמַ֖רְתָּ אַל־תִּירָֽא

Rashi understands the syntax and sense of the verse correctly, but, assuming that the speaker must be Jeremiah, interprets the verse metaphorically—the female being referred to is a priestly family (“family” in Hebrew is feminine).