Guide
What Is Lamentations Rabbah?
5th or 6th Century
Restricted
This midrash on the book of Lamentations contains homiletical sections opening with prefaces, or “proems,” and a verse-by-verse exegetical commentary. Its compilation is generally dated between the fifth and sixth centuries CE. The text is written in mishnaic Hebrew and western Aramaic, suggesting a Palestinian redaction. The central theme of Lamentations Rabbah, like the biblical book of Lamentations, is the destruction of the First Temple in 586 BCE. It also gives special attention to martyrdom stories.
Related Primary Sources
Primary Source
Persecution under Vespasian, Trajan, and Hadrian
Lamentations Rabbah 1:45; 2:4; 5:5
1:45. For these do I weep (Lamentations 1:16). Vespasian loaded three ships with the nobles of Jerusalem in order to place them in the Roman houses of prostitution. They [the noblemen] stood up and…
Primary Source
A King with Two Sons
Lamentations Rabbah Proem 2:2
“Thus said the Lord of Hosts: Listen! Summon the dirge-singers, let them come” (Jer. 9:16). [ . . . ]R. Yoḥanan said:It is like a king who had two sons. He became angry at the first one, took a stick…
Primary Source
Athenian Sophists
Lamentations Rabbah 1:5, 7–8, 10–11
5. A certain man from Jerusalem went to see a merchant in Athens. He came and was received at a tavern, where he found some people who were sitting around and drinking wine. After he had eaten and…
Primary Source
Lamentations Rabbah
Lamentations Rabbah Proem 2; 2:1:3; 4:25
R. Abba bar Kahana began: Who is the wise man who will understand this . . . (Jeremiah 9:11). R. Simeon ben Yoḥai taught: If you have seen towns…
Primary Source
God’s Departure and the People’s Sin
Lamentations Rabbah Proem 25; 1:9
[The Shekhinah departed from the Temple in ten stages: . . . It went] from the platform of the House to the Cherubs, as it is written, “Then the Presence of the Lord left…
Primary Source
Mourning for the Pilgrimages
Lamentations Rabbah 1:16 (80)
When I think of this, I pour out my soul: how I walked in the shade of a canopy, moved in procession, to the House of God with joyous shouts of praise (Psalm 42:5). R. Yudan and R. Nehemiah [said]…
Primary Source
Lamentations Rabbah on the Joy of Yom Kippur and the Fifteenth of Av
Lamentations Rabbah Proem 33
[There were no happier days for Israel than the fifteenth of Av and Yom Kippur.] Granted [that this is so] with respect to Yom Kippur, since it is a day of pardon and atonement for Israel and the day…
Primary Source
Israel Resists the Lure of the Nations
Lamentations Rabbah 3:7
R. Abba bar Kahana said, It is like a king who took a certain woman to be his wife. He wrote her a very large marriage contract. “So many bridal chambers will I make for you,” he wrote her. “So many…
Related Guide
Amoraic Midrash
2nd–9th Centuries