Lamentations

The Jerusalem Post contains a report/review here of  Lamentations: Faith in a Turbulent World by Yael Ziegler. It is an interesting overview of this neglected book.

A Thought on Lament

I keep a continual stack of reading material on my nightstand. Recently, I picked up a volume from the stack that I had thumbed through a few times and found this insightful thought.

Lament is how we bring our sorrow to God. Without lament we won't know how to process our pain. Silence, bitterness, and even anger can dominate our spiritual lives instead. Without lament we won't know how to help people walking through sorrow. Instead, we will offer trite solutions, unhelpful comments, or impatient responses. What's more without the sacred song of sorrow, we''ll miss the lessons historical laments are intended to teach us.

Mark Vroegop, Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy: Discovering the Grace of Lament (Wheaton: Crossway, 2019), 21.

Reading Lamentations

Reuven Kimelman has an interesting post here on reading Lamentations with inner-biblical exegesis.

Reading Lamentations Intertextually

Reuven Kimelman has a good post here showing intertextual links in Lamentations to other books in the Old Testament.

Suffering in the Book of Lamentations

Adele Berlin presents here a stark picture of the human suffering related to destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC. For those of us who have thankfully not seen the ravages of war first hand (like me), this article helps one to get a better sense of the awful human toll.

Lamentations: What Kind of Grief?

I was recently listening to a podcast on teaching Lamentations where the point was being made that the book teaches about grieving generally. While there is much grief in Lamentations, is it really about grieving in the general sense? Aren't the poetic expressions about the devastating consequences of sin against God (historically of the devastation of Jerusalem in 586 BC by the Babylonians). While the podcast mentioned sin and judgment it was almost an aside. Lamentations is not really  designed primarily as a book of comfort for those who have experienced tragic and unimaginable losses but a warning that rejecting God has tragic and unimaginable consequences. Sin and judgment frame the grief so powerfully expressed in the text.We should preach and teach it accordingly.

Teaching Lamentations

Nancy Guthrie talks to Colin Smith here about teaching Lamentations.

Lament in the Church

Lament is an important part of the Scriptures. Around half of the psalms in the book of Psalms is characterized as laments. And there is a book called Lamentations. So it is a bit puzzling that churches have struggled to incorporate lament into their gatherings. So I appreciated this article on the issue.

The Theology of the Book of Lamentations

Erik Raymond has a good post on the challenging theology of Lamentations here.

The Pe before Ayin in Lamentations

Many Bible students know that Lamentations contains four alphabetic acrostics. And those who have studied biblical Hebrew know that the letter ayin precedes pe. But a question then arises as to why the acrostics in Lamentations 2, 3, and 4 has the pe lines before ayin. A number of answers have been provided but they do not usually appear in a newspaper. So check out this interesting article in the Jewish Link of New Jersey.

Lamentations

This is an interesting description of Lamentations.

“Lamentations is a reality show set among the carnage of a burned-out city. There is no sugarcoating, no holding back—and no happy ending. The grotesqueness of human suffering on display in the scroll’s five laments rivals the blood and gore of any blockbuster disaster movie, and places it outside the boundaries of general church audiences. Lamentations is adult-only material and way beyond the comfort zone of worshipers seeking breathing space from the tragedy of their own lives.”

Kandy Queen-Sutherland, “Teaching/Preaching the Theology of Lamentations,” Interpretation 67 (2013): 184.
  

Lamentations

  

One might quibble with the first part of this statement in light of passages such as Lamentations 3:22-24 which appear to look forward in hope, but Adele Berlin captures the general sense of Lamentations well in noting, "Lamentations does not look forward and does not look back, does not dwell on what went before or what will come after–its gaze is fixed directly on the event itself . . . Lamentations is an expression of the suffering and grief associated with the calamity of destruction, but even more, it is a memorialization of that suffering and grief. It eternalizes the catastrophic moment and its aftermath, freezing it in time, probing it from various perspectives, and preserving it forever," 

Adele Berlin, Lamentations, Old Testament Library (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002), 1.

Preaching and Teaching Laments in the Old Testament

Walter Kaiser in answering the question, "Why Study and Preach from Laments?" states:

God has placed personal and national laments in Scripture, it would appear, as a corrective against euphoric, celebratory notions of faith, which romantically portray life as consisting only of sweetness and light. Such a one-sided, happiness-only view fails to deal with the realities of life. It drives the hurtful and painful side of life into the corners of faith and practice leaving few guides or comforts from mortals of the Word of God.

Walter C. Kaiser Jr. Preaching and Teaching from the Old Testament: A Guide for the Church (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003), 125.

Lament Forms in Lamentations

Mandy Park has a nice survey of lament forms and Lamentations 2 at the Floppy Hat blog. Read part 1 here.

Cups in the Old Testament

Claude Mariottini has posted on the figurative use of cups in the Old Testament. He identifies the following "cup" passages.

A Drinking Cup (Gen 40:11).
The Cup of the Evil-doers (Ps 11:6).
The Cup in the Lord’s Hand (Ps 75:8).
The Cup of the Lord’s Wrath (Isa 51:17).
The Cup of the Lord’s Fury (Jer 25:15).
The Cup of Staggering (Isa 51:17).
The Believer’s Cup (Ps 16:5).
The Cup of Blessings (Ps 23:5).
The Cup of Salvation (Ps 116:13 ESV).
The Cup of Consolation (Jer 16:7).
The Golden Cup (Jer 51:7).
The Cup of Suffering (Lam 4:21).
The Cup of Terror (Ezek 23:32).
The Cup of Horror and Desolation (Ezek 23:33).
The Cup from the Lord’s Right Hand (Hab 2:16).
The Cup of Trembling (Isa 51:22).

This might make for an interesting sermon series.

Commentaries on Lamentations

Keith Mathison Ligonier Ministries has a list and discussion of his top five commentaries on Lamentations at the Ligonier Ministries blog. The WBC by House is a good choice at number one, but Berlin and Huey deserve to be in the top five. I would then move Ryken and Mackay to the Runners Up category. Speaking of the Runners Up category, I would include Bergant. In any case, the top five Mathison listed are:

1. Duane Garrett and Paul House -- Song of Songs / Lamentations (Word Biblical Commentary, 2004).
2. J. Andrew Dearman -- Jeremiah / Lamentations (NIV Application Commentary, 2002).
3. Philip Graham Ryken -- Jeremiah and Lamentations (Preaching the Word, 2001).
4. Tremper Longman -- Jeremiah, Lamentations (New International Biblical Commentary, 2008).
5. John Mackay -- Lamentations (Mentor Commentary, 2008).