Qumran Lament for Jerusalem

Apocryphal Lamentations A

2nd Century BCE–1st Century CE

Fragment 1

Column 1

1[ . . . ] . . . [ . . . ] 2[ . . . ] . . . all our sins. And it is not in the power of our hands, because [we] have not listened 3[. . . at the time of] the visitation, so that all these things will happen to us because of the evil of 4[ . . . ] his covenant. [blank] Woe to us! 5[ . . . ] It has been burned by fire and ravaged 6[…

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The laments for Jerusalem found among the Dead Sea Scrolls from Qumran are related to those in the biblical book of Lamentations. The stance is penitential: God is just in punishing; the sin and blame are ours. At the end, the speaker calls upon God to remember the covenant and avenge his beleaguered and humiliated people. For another of these laments (Apocryphal Lamentations B), see “Poems of Lament.”

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Early Jewish Communal Laments

2nd Century BCE–6th Century CE
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Prayer and Liturgy in Antiquity

4th Century BCE–6th Century CE

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