ServiceMusic
Music in the service of the church in the service of the world
Reminder: the 3–2 qinah rhythm is vitally important to recitation and reading.
Throughout chapters one, two and four, Zion is not only the dwelling-place of God but is additionally personified by the hauntingly endearing term "Daughter Zion" and variants such as "Daughter Jerusalem" and "my Daughter People". The poems lament not merely an inanimate city; the city is a precious daughter, beloved of God.[21] This is set out within the very first verse.
Further, in this first poem all the cited human suffering is connected to, and filtered through, the persona of the city, from "her priests groan" (v4) through to "my priests and my elders perish" (v19).[22]
Observe that this first poem is in two "voices": a witness-narrator recites most of 1–11b; the city herself recites most of 11c–22. In each, though, the voice of the other occasionally appears, indeed, interrupts:
Section 7–10 is clearly female-intimate and the language heaps up with innuendo. But it contains a deep and unsettling ambiguity which has a significant bearing on how we receive it. At first sight, the section is strongly suggestive of Daughter Zion having been wilfully unfaithful and wantonly adulterous, including the accusation of "sin" (v8).[23] Yet in contrast with forcefully direct language in the Latter Prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the twelve minor prophets) the language of the Lamentations poet is non-specific: she is never here accused of "adultery" or "whoring".[24] And a totally different thread also emerges from behind this: that of victim of sexual defilement and rape, aligned with many other Lamentations passages focussed on the abuse and violation of the innocent. Both these contrasting threads, adulteress and rape victim, may be viewed as co-existing possibilities.[25] For us as readers, indeed as disciples and worshippers, inhabiting the poetic and disturbingly ambiguous both/and can be, and perhaps should be, more valuable than rushing into a falsely simplistic either/or.
Observe, too, the frequency of the word "all",[26] establishing and reinforcing the book's theme of the totality of the devastation and suffering—a totality given visual expression to the reader by the end-to-end A-to-Z alphabetic acrostic.
[1] "Alas!": Hebrew ekah, meaning "how", the name of the book itself, and beginning with the Hebrew letter 'aleph' equivalent to our 'A'.
[2] Despite the importance of the overall 3–2 qinah metre, the opening "Alas!" is probably a preamble 'anacrusis', external to that metre (i.e. 4–2). This is probably also true of the "Alas!" of the second chapter although probably not of the fourth. See Goldingay (2022), p.49, note 'c'. So in these two chapters I have followed this, and also used an additional acrostic "A…" word following that "Alas!"
[3] This verb "sit" runs as a thread through the book. Here at the start it describes the city; at almost the centre, 3:28, it describes a representative person; finally at almost the close, 5:19, it describes God himself.
[4] In some translations, "her lovers". But this is not the same as "lovers" in v.19. This "who love her" follows Berlin (2004) p.51.
[5] The Hebrew "straits" (or "narrows") resonates strongly with their word for "Egypt"; Berlin (2004) p.51; Goldingay (2022) p.54 note 'e'. This prompts a powerful reminder of their ancestral enslavement there. On that occasion, her pursuers famously did not overtake her, being destroyed at Moses' parting of the sea. But on this occasion there is no such deliverance.
[6] Note overlapping verb sequences: "afflicted"/"inflicted" (same Hebrew verb) at 5b and 12c, then "unleashed against" at 12b and 22. Dobbs-Allsopp (2012) p.68.
[7] The Hebrew word, here rendered "treasures", has several shades of meaning. Its uses in vv.7, 10 and 11 (briefly: valuable goods; feminine privacy; children) seem to play the poetic ambiguity of their interaction to advantage. See translation notes.
[8] The term "days of old" will recur at almost the very end of the book, 5:21. Assis (2009), p.322.
[9] Verses 7 and 9 share a common Hebrew verb root for past and future tenses. The English "remember" is close, but only works for the past (v.7), not prospectively for the future (v.9). The basis chosen here, and worded to try to preserve 3–2 qinah rhythm, is "calls to mind" (past) and "no mind…to" (future). See Berman (2023), p.34.
[10] This verse, like 2:19 and 4:15, has an extra line in the Hebrew, considered by some commentators to be a marginal gloss. See also Provan (2016), pp.41–42. Alternatively, prior to the finalisation of the text, this stanza may have circulated in different versions: see Dobbs-Allsopp (2023), p.240. For an overview of suggested variant readings and ideas, see Kotzé (2011), pp.61–63.
[11] The Hebrew is unclear and anomalous, with three possibilities of meaning and interpretation: "mockery", "wanderer" and "menstruant", the last supported by its similarity to (although not sameness as) the closing phrase of the more certain v17. There may well be an intentional interplay of them all. See Berlin (2004), pp.53–54 (and 58–59); also Goldingay (2022), pp.62–63. This version uses a common "soiled" at both verses to reflect this resonance.
[12] The narrator's words can be seen here to imply Daughter Zion's guilty reaction. But at v13 she turns the same terminology to her defence.
[13] See footnote at v8.
[14] This is the only occurrence of this verb in the entire Bible, so any translation is conjectural.
[15] Original wording is something like "Delivers my Lord [to] hands [I am] not able to withstand". Expressing that within 3–2 qinah is tricky; even more so when trying to keep the resonance of the "his hand" earlier in the verse.
[16] Some Jewish commentators here see a comforter-Messiah being yearned for; Goldingay (2022), p.75.
[17] The narrator's earlier speech had used the verbs "spread" and "command" close to its culmination (v.10). The opening of their next speech re-deploys the same verbs with different slants. Linafelt (2000), p.51.
[18] Berlin (2004) pp.44,60 takes this half-line as vocalised utterance. Here that would be: Yearnings…they heard: "none brings me comfort".
[19] In Hebrew this word, meaning something like "bad", can apply in two opposite directions: someone can be either on the receiving end (e.g. "I'm bad", such as distressed or injured: "in a bad way") or the performing end (e.g. "I'm bad", such as an evildoer's innate badness). Here the progression from v21 to v22 exploits this word's dual direction for a revengeful schadenfreude. See Goldingay (2022), pp.80–81. To reflect this "same but opposite" poetically whilst avoiding potential ambiguity, we use the near-rhymes "malignant state" and "malignant ways".
[20] The opening v.1 "great", there used twice positively, here returns, but in negative contrast, to bracket this chapter. See Dobbs-Allsopp (2012), p.74.
[21] Adelman (2021); Berlin (2004), pp.10–12.
[22] Dobbs-Allsopp (2012), p.62.
[23] Several other linguistic resonances and wordplays across the whole chapter lead the surface reading in this direction.
[24] Dobbs-Allsopp (2012), p.64.
[25] Dobbs-Allsopp (2012), pp.63–67; Hens-Piazza (2017), pp.8–18.
[26] Goldingay (2022), pp.11, 41.