Lamentations
Five funeral poems for a city, with hope buried in the middle.
Who wrote it: Anonymous. Tradition names Jeremiah, who was there; the book itself doesn't say. Written soon after Babylon burned Jerusalem in 586 BC.
What it is
Babylon besieged Jerusalem for a year and a half, then broke in, burned the temple, and marched the survivors away. Lamentations is what someone wrote afterwards, standing in the ashes. Chapter 1 personifies the city as a widow weeping at night with nobody to comfort her. Chapter 2 says plainly that the LORD did this, in anger, and doesn't soften it. Children are fainting in the streets. Mothers have eaten their own babies. The poet's eyes have run out of tears.
The form is strict. Chapters 1, 2 and 4 are alphabet poems, each verse beginning with the next Hebrew letter. Chapter 3 triples it: sixty-six verses, three per letter. Chapter 5 has twenty-two verses but drops the alphabet, as if the writer couldn't keep order any more. Grief given a structure so it can be spoken, A to Z, all of it.
In the dead center of the middle poem the writer remembers something: because of the LORD's faithful love we're not consumed; his mercies are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. That's where the hymn came from. It's said by a man who's just described God as a bear lying in wait for him, and the same chapter goes back to grief a few verses later. The hope is real and it's small, which is why people who are actually grieving trust it.
The last verse is an unfinished question: unless you've completely rejected us and are angry beyond measure. Jewish tradition repeats verse 21 after it in synagogue so the reading doesn't end there. The book itself lets it end there.
Verses worth keeping
19Remember my affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the bitterness. 20My soul still remembers them, and is bowed down within me. 21This I recall to my mind; therefore I have hope.
Gen Zsame meaning, your wordsRemember my suffering and my misery, the bitterness and the poison. My soul keeps remembering them and sinks inside me. But there's something I call to mind, and that's why I have hope.
The turn. He doesn't stop remembering the pain; he chooses to remember something else alongside it.
22It is because of the LORD’s loving kindnesses that we are not consumed, because his mercies don’t fail. 23They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness.
Gen Zsame meaning, your wordsIt's because of the LORD's faithful love that we aren't wiped out, because his mercies never fail. They're new every morning. Your faithfulness is huge.
The hymn 'Great Is Thy Faithfulness' comes from here. It was written by a man standing in a burned city.
31For the Lord will not cast off forever. 32For though he causes grief, yet he will have compassion according to the multitude of his loving kindnesses. 33For he does not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men.
Gen Zsame meaning, your wordsThe Lord won't reject people forever. Even when he brings grief, he'll show compassion, because his faithful love is so vast. He doesn't enjoy afflicting people or causing anyone pain.
The book has spent two chapters saying God did this. Here it says he didn't enjoy it. Both are kept.
- Gen Zsame meaning, your words
Turn us back to yourself, LORD, and we'll come back. Make our days new, like they used to be.
The second-to-last verse, repeated after the last one in synagogue readings so the book doesn't end on the question that follows.
Read Lamentations
The full text, every chapter, from the World English Bible, a modern public-domain translation. Pick a chapter below. The highlighted verses are the place to start if you have never read it.
Lamentations 3
1I am the man who has seen affliction by the rod of his wrath.
2He has led me and caused me to walk in darkness, and not in light.
3Surely he turns his hand against me again and again all day long.
4He has made my flesh and my skin old. He has broken my bones.
5He has built against me, and surrounded me with bitterness and hardship.
6He has made me dwell in dark places, as those who have been long dead.
7He has walled me about, so that I can’t go out. He has made my chain heavy.
8Yes, when I cry, and call for help, he shuts out my prayer.
9He has walled up my ways with cut stone. He has made my paths crooked.
10He is to me as a bear lying in wait, as a lion in hiding.
11He has turned away my path, and pulled me in pieces. He has made me desolate.
12He has bent his bow, and set me as a mark for the arrow.
13He has caused the shafts of his quiver to enter into my kidneys.
14I have become a derision to all my people, and their song all day long.
15He has filled me with bitterness. He has stuffed me with wormwood.
16He has also broken my teeth with gravel. He has covered me with ashes.
17You have removed my soul far away from peace. I forgot prosperity.
18I said, “My strength has perished, along with my expectation from the LORD.”
19Remember my affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the bitterness.
20My soul still remembers them, and is bowed down within me.
21This I recall to my mind; therefore I have hope.
22It is because of the LORD’s loving kindnesses that we are not consumed, because his mercies don’t fail.
23They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness.
24“The LORD is my portion,” says my soul. “Therefore I will hope in him.”
25The LORD is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him.
26It is good that a man should hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the LORD.
27It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.
28Let him sit alone and keep silence, because he has laid it on him.
29Let him put his mouth in the dust, if it is so that there may be hope.
30Let him give his cheek to him who strikes him. Let him be filled full of reproach.
31For the Lord will not cast off forever.
32For though he causes grief, yet he will have compassion according to the multitude of his loving kindnesses.
33For he does not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men.
34To crush under foot all the prisoners of the earth,
35to turn away the right of a man before the face of the Most High,
36to subvert a man in his cause, the Lord doesn’t approve.
37Who is he who says, and it comes to pass, when the Lord doesn’t command it?
38Doesn’t evil and good come out of the mouth of the Most High?
39Why should a living man complain, a man for the punishment of his sins?
40Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the LORD.
41Let’s lift up our heart with our hands to God in the heavens.
42“We have transgressed and have rebelled. You have not pardoned.
43“You have covered us with anger and pursued us. You have killed. You have not pitied.
44You have covered yourself with a cloud, so that no prayer can pass through.
45You have made us an off-scouring and refuse in the middle of the peoples.
46“All our enemies have opened their mouth wide against us.
47Terror and the pit have come on us, devastation and destruction.”
48My eye runs down with streams of water, for the destruction of the daughter of my people.
49My eye pours down and doesn’t cease, without any intermission,
50until the LORD looks down, and sees from heaven.
51My eye affects my soul, because of all the daughters of my city.
52They have chased me relentlessly like a bird, those who are my enemies without cause.
53They have cut off my life in the dungeon, and have cast a stone on me.
54Waters flowed over my head. I said, “I am cut off.”
55I called on your name, LORD, out of the lowest dungeon.
56You heard my voice: “Don’t hide your ear from my sighing, and my cry.”
57You came near in the day that I called on you. You said, “Don’t be afraid.”
58Lord, you have pleaded the causes of my soul. You have redeemed my life.
59LORD, you have seen my wrong. Judge my cause.
60You have seen all their vengeance and all their plans against me.
61You have heard their reproach, LORD, and all their plans against me,
62the lips of those that rose up against me, and their plots against me all day long.
63You see their sitting down and their rising up. I am their song.
64You will pay them back, LORD, according to the work of their hands.
65You will give them hardness of heart, your curse to them.
66You will pursue them in anger, and destroy them from under the heavens of the LORD.
Questions about Lamentations
Did Jeremiah write Lamentations?
The book doesn't name its author. The Greek translation added a note saying Jeremiah sat weeping and spoke it, and 2 Chronicles 35:25 mentions Jeremiah composing laments, so the tradition is old. The style differs from his book in places, and some scholars think it's several voices. Whoever wrote it was in Jerusalem when it fell, and that's what matters for reading it.
Does it really say God caused the suffering?
Yes, repeatedly. Chapter 2 says the Lord has become like an enemy, and chapter 3 opens with 'I am the man who has seen affliction by the rod of his wrath'. The writer never blames Babylon alone; he sees the fall as judgment the prophets had warned about. He also says God doesn't afflict willingly and that his mercies never fail. Holding both, in the same poem, without resolving them, is what the book does. It doesn't ask you to explain the pain. It asks you to bring it.
Is 'great is your faithfulness' a happy verse?
It's a defiant one. Three verses earlier he's remembering the wormwood and the gall. A few verses later he's back to sitting alone in silence. The faithfulness he's talking about isn't that things worked out; the city is still burned. It's that they're not completely gone, and morning came again. If you've only heard it as a hymn, read the chapter. It gets more honest and, strangely, more comforting.
Why read Lamentations if I'm not grieving?
Because someone near you is, or will be, and this book teaches you what to say and, more importantly, what not to. It never rushes to the bright side. It sits in the ruin for four and a half chapters. Learning to do that for someone else is one of the most useful things you can take from the Bible, and there's nowhere better to learn it.