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The opening as it read in 2005
Book of Lamentations ( Hebrew מגילת איכה) is a book of the Bible Old Testament and Jewish Tanakh . It is called in the Hebrew canon 'Ekhah, meaning "How," being the formula for the commencement of a song of wailing. It is the first word of the book (see 2 Sam. 1:19-27). The Septuagint adopted the name rendered "Lamentations" (Greek threnoi = Hebrew qinoth ) now in common use, to denote the character of the book, in which the prophet mourns over the desolations brought on Jerusalem and the Holy Land by the Chaldeans. In the Hebrew Bible it is placed among the Ketuvim , the Scrolls . According to tradition, authorship is assigned to the Prophet Jeremiah , who was a court official during the conquest of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar , when the First Temple was destroyed and King Jehoiachin was taken prisoner (cf. Is 38 ff and Is 52). In the Septuagint and the Vulgate the Lamentations are placed directly after the Prophet. It is said that he retired to a cavern outside the Damascus gate, where he wrote this book. That cavern is still pointed out. "In the face of a rocky hill, on the western side of the city, the local belief has placed 'the grotto of Jeremiah.' There, in that fixed attitude of grief which Michael Angelo has immortalized, the prophet may well be supposed to have mourned the fall of his country" (Stanley, Jewish Church). However, the strict acrostic style of four of the five poems is not found at all in the Book of Jeremiah itself, and authorship of the Prophet is disputed. The work is probably based on the older Mesopotamian genre of the city lament , of which the Lament for Ur is among the oldest and best-known. The book consists of five separate poems. In chapter 1 the prophet dwells on the manifold miseries oppressed by which the city sits as a solitary widow weeping sorely. In chapter 2 these miseries are described in connection with the national sins that had caused them. Chapter 3 speaks of hope for the people of God. The chastisement would only be for their good; a better day would dawn for them. Chapter 4 laments the ruin and desolation that had come upon the city and temple, but traces it only to the people's sins. Chapter 5 is a prayer that Zion's reproach may be taken away in the repentance and recovery of the people. The first four poems (chapters) are acrostics , like some of the Psalms (25, 34, 37, 119), i.e., each verse begins with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet taken in order. The first, second, and fourth have each twenty-two verses, the number of the letters in the Hebrew alphabet. The third has sixty-six verses, in which each three successive verses begin with the same letter. The fifth is not acrostic, but also has twenty-two verses. Speaking of the "Wailing-place (q.v.) of the Jews" at Jerusalem, a portion of the old wall of the Temple of Solomon , Schaff says: "There the Jews assemble every Friday afternoon to bewail the downfall of the holy city, kissing the stone wall and watering it with their tears. They repeat from their well-worn Hebrew Bibles and prayer-books the Lamentations of Jeremiah and suitable Psalms." Readings, chantings, and choral settings, of the book of Lamentations, are used in the Christian religious service known as the tenebrae (latin for darkness ).1
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In Judaism it is traditionally recited on the fast day of Tisha B'Av and in Christianity it is traditionally read during Tenebrae of the Holy Triduum .
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The opening as it stood in 2015
Nevi'im (Prophets) Latter Minor Hosea Joel Amos Obadiah Jonah Micah Nahum Habakkuk Zephaniah Haggai Zechariah Malachi Ketuvim (Writings) Five Megillot (Scrolls) Historical Old Testament ( Christianity ) Deuterocanonical Bible portal v t e The Book of Lamentations ( , Eikhah ) is a collection of poetic laments for the destruction of Jerusalem .In the Hebrew Bible it appears in the Ketuvim ("Writings"), beside the Song of Songs , Book of Ruth , Ecclesiastes and the Book of Esther (the Megilloth or "Five Scrolls"), although there is no set order; in the Christian Old Testament it follows the Book of Jeremiah , as the prophet Jeremiah is its traditional author.Jeremiah's authorship is no longer generally accepted; nevertheless, it is generally accepted that the destruction of Jerusalem by Babylon in 586 BCE forms the background to the poems.The book is partly a traditional "city lament" mourning the desertion of the city by its god, its destruction, and the ultimate return of the divinity, and partly a funeral dirge in which the bereaved bewails and addresses the dead.The tone is bleak: God does not speak, the degree of suffering is presented as undeserved, and expectations of future redemption are minimal.The book is traditionally recited on the fast day of Tisha B'Av ("Ninth of Av"), mourning the destruction of both the First Temple and the Second ; in Christianity it is traditionally read during Tenebrae of the Holy Triduum .
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Book of the Bible "Lamentations" redirects here. Nevi'im (Prophets) Latter Minor Hosea Joel Amos Obadiah Jonah Micah Nahum Habakkuk Zephaniah Haggai Zechariah Malachi Ketuvim (Writings) Five Megillot (Scrolls) Historical Old Testament ( Christianity ) Deuterocanonical Bible portal v t e The Book of Lamentations ( , ‘Êykhôh , from its incipit meaning "how") is a collection of poetic laments for the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC. In the Hebrew Bible it appears in the Ketuvim ("Writings"), beside the Song of Songs , Book of Ruth , Ecclesiastes and the Book of Esther (the Megilot or "Five Scrolls"), although there is no set order; in the Christian Old Testament it follows the Book of Jeremiah , as the prophet Jeremiah is its traditional author. Jeremiah's authorship is no longer generally accepted, although it is generally accepted that the destruction of Jerusalem by Babylon in 586 BC forms the background to the poems. The book is partly a traditional "city lament" mourning the desertion of the city by God, its destruction, and the ultimate return of the divinity, and partly a funeral dirge in which the bereaved bewails and addresses the dead. The tone is bleak: God does not speak, the degree of suffering is presented as overwhelming, and expectations of future redemption are minimal. Nonetheless, the author repeatedly makes clear that the city (and even the author himself) had profusely sinned against God, to which God had strongly responded.In doing so the author does not blame God but rather presents him as righteous, just and sometimes even as merciful.
Red text was written in or rewritten since the previous snapshot. Their copy is revision 964690136.
The opening as it stood on October 6, 2023 1 passage from the previous snapshot no longer appear
Book of the Bible "Lamentations" redirects here. Nevi'im (Prophets) Latter Minor Hosea Joel Amos Obadiah Jonah Micah Nahum Habakkuk Zephaniah Haggai Zechariah Malachi Ketuvim (Writings) Five Megillot (Scrolls) Historical Old Testament ( Christianity ) Deuterocanonical Bible portal v t e The Book of Lamentations ( , ʾĒḵā , from its incipit meaning "how") is a collection of poetic laments for the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE. In the Hebrew Bible it appears in the Ketuvim ("Writings") as one of the Five Megillot (or "Five Scrolls") alongside the Song of Songs , Book of Ruth , Ecclesiastes and the Book of Esther although there is no set order. In the Christian Old Testament it follows the Book of Jeremiah , as the prophet Jeremiah is its traditional author. However, according to modern scholarship, while the destruction of Jerusalem by Babylon in 586/7 BCE forms the background to the poems, they were most likely not written by Jeremiah.What has been instead proposed is that each of the book's chapters was written by a different anonymous poet, which were then joined to form the book.Some motifs of a traditional Mesopotamian "city lament" are evident in the book, such as mourning the desertion of the city by God, its destruction, and the ultimate return of the divinity; others "parallel the funeral dirge in which the bereaved bewails... and... addresses the [dead]". The tone is bleak: God does not speak, the degree of suffering is presented as overwhelming, and expectations of future redemption are minimal. Nonetheless, the author repeatedly makes clear that the city, and even the author himself, have profusely sinned against God, justifying his wrath. In doing so the author does not blame God but rather presents him as righteous, just, and sometimes even as merciful.
Red text was written in or rewritten since the previous snapshot. Their copy is revision 1176597100.
The opening as it stood in 2025 2 passages from the previous snapshot no longer appear
Book of the Bible "Lamentations" redirects here. Nevi'im (Prophets) Latter Minor Hosea Joel Amos Obadiah Jonah Micah Nahum Habakkuk Zephaniah Haggai Zechariah Malachi Ketuvim (Writings) Five Megillot (Scrolls) Historical Old Testament ( Christianity ) Deuterocanonical Bible portal v t e Image from "Jeremiah's Lament" of Francysk Skaryna (1517–1519), in the Taraškievica orthography of the Belarussian language Greek translation of Lamentations 1:1–1:11 in the Codex Sinaiticus The Book of Lamentations ( Hebrew : אֵיכָה , ʾĒḵā , from its incipit meaning "how") is a collection of poetic laments for the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE. In the Hebrew Bible , it appears in the Ketuvim ("Writings") as one of the Five Megillot ("Five Scrolls") alongside the Song of Songs , Book of Ruth , Ecclesiastes , and the Book of Esther . In the Christian Old Testament , it follows the Book of Jeremiah , for the prophet Jeremiah is traditionally understood to have been its author.By the mid-19th century, German scholars doubted Jeremiah's authorship, a view that has since become the prevailing scholarly consensus .Most scholars also agree that the Book of Lamentations was composed shortly after Jerusalem's fall in 586 BCE. Some motifs of a traditional Mesopotamian " city lament " are evident in the book, such as mourning the desertion of the city by God , its destruction, and the ultimate return of the deity; others "parallel the funeral dirge in which the bereaved bewails... and... addresses the [dead]". The tone is bleak: God does not speak, the degree of suffering is presented as overwhelming, and expectations of future redemption are minimal. Nonetheless, the author repeatedly makes clear that the city—and even the author himself—has profusely sinned against God, thus justifying God's wrath.In doing so, the author does not blame God but rather presents God as righteous, just, and sometimes even merciful.
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