page_title: Book of Lamentations
section_title: Structure
hierarchical_section_title: Book of Lamentations / Structure
context_page_description: The Book of Lamentations is a collection of poetic laments for the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE. In the Hebrew Bible it appears in the Ketuvim, beside 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. Jeremiah's authorship is no longer generally accepted, although 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 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 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.
context_section_description: Lamentations consists of five distinct poems, corresponding to its five chapters.  Two of its defining characteristic features are the alphabetic acrostic and its qinah meter.  But few English translations capture either of these; even fewer attempt to capture both.
caption: Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem (Rembrandt)
exif: {}