Lamentations

Each chapter is one lamentation

Chapters 1-4

These chapters form an acrostic: each poetic verse starting with a new letter of the hebrew alphabet.

All five chapters are five lamentations/poems of lament over the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple by the Babylonians

Chapters 1 & 2 each have one verse per letter

Chapter 1: Personifies Jerusalem as a widow

Chapter 2: focuses on the fall of jerusalem and God’s wrath

Chapter 3 has three verses per letter

personifies Jerusalem as a lonely suffering man

There is hope still in his mouth

Lamentations 3:22–24 KJV 1900

It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him.

Chapter 4 goes back to one letter per verse

it is a description of the 2-year siege on Jerusalem

Contrasts Jerusalem before the siege to after

Chapter 5 is a prayer for God’s mercy

Ends unresolved

Lamentations 5:19 KJV 1900

Thou, O Lord, remainest for ever; Thy throne from generation to generation.

Lamentations 5:20 KJV 1900

Wherefore dost thou forget us for ever, And forsake us so long time?

Lamentations 5:22 KJV 1900

But thou hast utterly rejected us; Thou art very wroth against us.

9th of Aviv (587/6 B.C & A.D. 70)