“The Hebrew Bible: Lamentations” (translated by Robert Alter)

Alter begins his introduction with some basic facts, “The only reasonably safe conclusion one can draw about the origins of the Book of Lamentations is the likelihood that it was composed in the immediate aftermath of the destruction of the kingdom of Judah in 586 B.C.E.” Next, he delves into its format, “Lamentations is unique among books of the Bible in that four of its five chapters are composed as alphabetic acrostics, with the third chapter being a triple acrostic…. It is unclear why the alphabetic acrostic form was felt appropriate for these laments. Could it be that the progress from aleph to taw was felt to imply a comprehensive listing of all the disasters that had befallen the people?” Finally, Alter delves into Lamentations’s modern liturgical usage, “One readily understands why it is that Jewish tradition fixed the recitation of these five laments as an annual ritual, not merely in commemoration of the destruction of the First Temple or the Second but also as a way of fathoming the ghastly recurrent violence that has darkened two millennia of history.”

In Lamentations 1:21, Alter details a poetic formula common in much biblical verse, “May they be like me. This line and the preceding one incorporate an implied causal sequence: first the enemies gloat over the destruction of Judah; then the speaker registers the fact that the catastrophe was God’s doing and the foe was only His instrument; finally, the speaker hopes that the same dire fate will overtake Zion’s conquerers. This is in fact a recurrent idea in Prophetic literature: that Judah’s enemies may be God’s “rod” of punishment but will in turn suffer for the terrible harm they have inflicted on Judah.”

Alter describes the clever use of metaphor in Lamentations 4:1, “How has gold turned dull. The first two verses of this lament are an interesting instance of literal statement that is then revealed to be a metaphor. Verse 1 appears to present a concrete image of precious materials debased—gold tarnished, gems spilled to the ground. Then, in verse 2, with the representation of Zion’s children “worth their weight in gold” (literally, “weighed in gold”), it becomes evident that they are the treasures now counted as worthless.”