What Is the Book of Lamentations?

The book of Lamentations contains five chapters, each a poem lamenting the destruction of the Temple and the city of Jerusalem in 586 BCE and the events surrounding it. The first four chapters are structured as alphabetic acrostics (chapter 3 is a triple acrostic). The last chapter is a prayer. Each poem has a distinctive tone and perspective on the catastrophic events. In chapter 1, Jerusalem has been defeated and now sits alone, shamed, empty of her population and in mourning. Chapter 2 takes us back to the siege of Jerusalem before the final defeat, to the starvation and death that sieges regularly entail. Chapter 3 speaks in the voice of a man who has gone into exile. Chapter 4 again looks at Jerusalem in the final days before its destruction, showing the degradation of its inhabitants. The poetry is moving, although in many places it utilizes conventional tropes for war and defeat. Although not necessarily eyewitness accounts, the descriptions have a certain immediacy and let the reader relive the destruction. These poems commemorate a major event in ancient Israel’s history that forever changed its outlook on its place in the world and its relationship with God. In addition to memorializing this significant event, the poems call upon God to respond to Israel in its time of crisis, when its continuation as a nation was uncertain. Lamentations is read publicly on Tishah be-Av, the ninth of the Hebrew month of Av, which commemorates the destruction of the First and Second Temples.