Book of Lamentations

In Prophetic Lament, Soong-Chan Rah draws upon the book of Lamentations to promote lament and critique the triumphalist mentalities of many in the American Church today. You can read my summary of the book and evaluative comments at http://www.booksataglance.com/book-reviews/prophetic-lament-call-justice-troubled-times-soong-chan-rah/ or in the attached file.

This paper is a threefold reading of Lamentations 1 through an honor-shame perspective. First, it explores some characteristics of the Mediterranean culture as well as honor-shame references in the Old Testament in general. Second, it gives a close reading of Lamentations 1 through the perspective of honor-shame. Third, it offers some contextual reflections of the study. This study is significant because there is no complete study on the book of Lamentations through an honor-shame perspective. A close reading of the book of Lamentations reveals cultural norms of honor as well as expressions of honor that counter those common in that culture. Honor and Shame in the Mediterranean Culture A community of faith contains a diversity of perceptions of honor. Despite group ideals, not everyone will understand honor the same way. Some want to avoid shame while others try to earn honor by showing off their vulnerabilities. A community will despise some and honor others. Anthropological and sociological studies of the Mediterranean culture, especially their study on the concepts of honor and shame, are helpful in biblical studies. 1 Many anthropological studies on Mediterranean society tend to generalize the notions of honor and shame. Such studies show that Mediterranean cultures are agnostic, male-centric, and function by codes of honor and shame. In those communities, group ideals are more important than those of an individual. There is limited good available, so people compete to obtain wealth and honor. 2 For example, the Arab culture is characterized by 1 Renata Rabichev, "

This thesis argues for the presence of retributive theodicy in the book of Lamentations. This is done through a comparison with three ancient Near Eastern laments. In chapter one, the precedent for such a study is established through the presentation of three competing views of Lamentations (i.e., Lamentations as a work of liturgy, Lamentations as pure lament, and Lamentations as retributive theodicy). It is then demonstrated that much of the research on Lamentations focuses on similarities with ANE city-laments. It is proposed that a study that identifies and explores the differences between these texts might illumine helpful elements for discerning the meaning of the text of Lamentations.
In chapter two, the hermeneutical foundation of such a study is laid. In chapter three, the three most important Sumerian laments are exposited and similarities between these laments and the biblical Lamentations are demonstrated. This step proves further credibility to the present study by proving the claim of chapter two that these laments belong to the same genre. In chapter four, the differences between Lamentations and these three ANE city-laments are elucidated. The two literary differences (i.e., acrostic pattern and chiasm form) prove that the two theological differences (i.e., sin of the lamenter and the righteousness of divine aggressor) are both intentional and important to the overall message of the book. In chapter five, these two theological differences are further explored to discern their relationship to retributive theodicy. In this chapter, it is shown that Lamentations does contain elements of retributive theodicy which is based upon the covenant infidelity of Israel and the covenant fidelity of Yahweh.

The book of Lamentations has been noted in biblical scholarship for its peculiar acrostic structure, a feature which makes the book unique in the OT in terms of style and literary unity. Taking inspiration from the possible meaning(s) of this structure, coupled with a detailed analysis of the central verses (vv. 22-24) of the middle poem (Lam 3), this author seeks to juxtapose the beacon of hope in the midst of lament for the destruction of Jerusalem with the experience of the Nigerian nation in the wake of religio-political terrorism and chronic system failure. God’s proofs of mercy (ḥeseḏ) and respect for law and (acrostic) order are put forward in the final analysis as divine and human panacea, just like faith and reason, in rekindling the light of hope for the nation.

Scholars debate the ethical relevance of the Old Testament. For evangelical Christians, the OT is part of the whole canon and its message is relevant to present times. In this paper, I study Genesis 22:1-19 as a test case to argue that Christian ethics is intrinsically related to the theological message of Scripture. I argue that Gen 22 is the trial of YHWH as much as the trial of Abraham. In the end, YHWH proves that he is not like other deities that demand child sacrifice. However, Gen 22 is a limited event and one needs to be careful not to​ emulate Abraham's actions. The major portrait of the Bible is that God is the life-giver. This ethical portrait is applicable to Asian contexts where human sacrifices are practices in some corners.

The Tenebrae Lessons were important components of Holy Week in Baroque France. While François Couperin's settings of the Tenebrae lessons hold a significant place in both the repertoire and scholarly literature, Marc-Antoine Charpentier's voluminous settings of the Tenebrae Lessons deserve a place alongside those by Couperin. This paper first outlines the liturgy of the Tenebrae service. Second, it examines the welcoming and influences of the Italian style on the French Leçons de Ténèbres at a time when Lully’s seizure over stage music was complete. Third, it illustrates the influence of secular music making on this important Liturgical Office. Fourth, it briefly discusses the importance of rhetoric for Charpentier and his contemporaries, and rhetoric's influence on the compositional style of liturgical music.

Weeping is a powerful non-verbal behavior by which people signal their pain and distress, and communicate a need for comfort and assistance. The book of Lamentations verbalizes the phenomenon of weeping to describe the tears of ‘daughter Zion’ and the empathetic tears of the narrator who addresses her in chap. 2. Thus, the eloquence and power of the poetry is augmented by verbal descriptions of a non-verbal behavior. In Lamentations 1–2, the motif of weeping is inextricably bound up with the personification of Zion as both a daughter and as the mother of the people. This article examines the personification of Jerusalem and its functions within the poetry in order to understand the expression ‘daughter Zion’ and how ‘daughter Zion’ heightens the emotional impact of the poetry and becomes a source of comfort in the midst of deep despair. As a daughter, Zion stands in solidarity with the suffering children of Lamentations, and as the mother of the community, she intercedes on their behalf and weeps for her suffering and missing children. All the instances of weeping occur with reference to the death of children.

בספר זה מופיעה מהדורה ביקורתית של תרגומו ופרשנותו של רב סעדיה גאון לספר איכה, שנכתבה בערבית-יהודית. מהדורה זו, מלווה בהקדמה ובתרגום ללשון הקודש, הערות ועיונים, ובהם מושם דגש על השפעתו פרשנותו של רס"ג על הבאים אחריו, בפרשנות המקרא ובהלכה.
רס"ג קרא לספר זה "כתאב אכ'לק" - ספר המידות, והוא כולל בו דיון נרחב אודות עשרים מידות הנפש, מעלותיהן וחסרונותיהן.

The goal of this book is to present a revised edition of the Sumerian Lamentation over the Destruction of Ur, a lament bewailing the fall of the glorious Ur III kingdom in 2004 B.C.E.
Lamentation is a well-known genre in world literature. Laments of various types are part of the cultural legacy and literary corpus of many societies, from ancient to modern times, and Sumerian literature is no exception. However, Mesopotamian lamentation literature includes a significant body of laments belonging to a unique and almost unparalleled genre—the genre of lamentations over the destruction of cities and temples. This genre has no known ancient parallel outside the ancient Near East; more specifically, it is almost exclusively attested in Sumerian and biblical literature. The Lamentation over the Destruction of Ur is the most famous and important exemplar of the city-laments.
In this updated and revised publication of the Lamentation over the Destruction of Ur, Samet provides an introductory discussion of Sumerian city-laments in general; a full presentation of the text of the Ur Lament, including transliteration, translation, and an extensive philological commentary; and an accounting of the extant textual witness in score format. Plates with color photos of many texts are included.

This article will claim that biblical lament expressed in corporate worship is uniquely fitted to provide therapeutic benefit for trauma victims. First, the pervasiveness of traumatic experience will be explored and established. Second, the contemporary church’s neglect of lament will be explored and established. Third, the Lament Psalms and the book of Lamentations will be explored and examined with attention given to contents, structures, and backgrounds that confirm these texts as the “biblical language of trauma.” Fourth and finally, the therapeutic benefits of lament will be examined in the light of trauma recovery theory and pastoral theology. The terms victim and survivor will be used interchangeably since each term represents an aspect of traumatic experience. (Individuals are wounded, shaken, and disoriented – victimized; but in the waves of aftermath, existence often becomes survival.)
Originally published in Cultural Encounters, Volume 11, Number 1, Winter 2015, pp. 50-68.

בשנת תשע"ח פורסם על ידי מכון האוצר בראשות שמעיה הלוי, "ספר הביאור" - פירוש רבי תנחום הירושלמי למגילות אסתר, רות ואיכה, בתרגומם של הרב עזרא קורח והרב נסים סבתו, ובצירוף הערות ומבוא לתולדות המחבר ממני.
המהדורה נדפסה בחפזון ובספר מצומצם של עותקים, ואינה מצויה בשוק. מצורף בזאת תדפיף של המבוא לתולדות המחבר ודרכו בחיבוריו.

This article deals with the prayer Ashurbanipal prayed to Marduk before returning his statue to Babylon, as recounted in his inscription labeled L4. This is the second of four cases in the corpus of Assyrian royal inscriptions, in which, in addition to the report that the king prayed, the prayer is given verbatim; the god is appealed to in the second person (the first case was used in an inscription of Esarhaddon). In answering the question as to the source of the version of the prayer that appears in the royal inscription, I examine its possible linkage to prayers outside of the context of the royal inscriptions, two ritual prayers as well as a historiograhpical one. All three prayers examined are bilingual, and show affinities to the kalûtu, the literary corpus of the lamentation priests. Putting Ashurbanipal's prayer in this context allows us to speculate that the prayer cited is an ex-generic lament prepared for the use of the king when he was to participate in a ritual concerning the relocation of a divine statue, and that the royal scribes used a (or, the) copy of this prayer while composing the L¬4 inscription.

This article presents an initial sketch for a comparative theological study of the city lament genre in Mesopotamia and in the Bible. First, it surveys the foundations of the theology of Sumerian city laments, referring to issues such as the responsibility sharing among the gods; the cosmological mechanism generating the destruction; the involvement of natural forces in the process of devastation; and the reasons suggested by the laments for the destruction. These issues are then examined from a comparative point of view. Some interesting differences between the Sumerian and the Biblical city lament traditions are recognizable, including the extent to which the god is responsible for the events; the different theological mechanisms developed by each tradition to deal with the problem of theodicy; the relation between nature and history as two arenas of divine activity; and the question if, and how, the destruction could be understood in causal terms of crime and punishment.

The purpose of this study is to critique some of the prevalent theories regarding the biblical alphabetic acrostics and to expose a previously unrecognized feature that most of the acrostics share. " Alphabetical thinking " manifests itself differently in each poem; however, one common thread in most of the acrostics is the more prevalent use of the qatal form instead of the yiqtol form as compared to other poetry. This is likely a function of the versatility of the qatal to fit both the acrostic artifice and the acrostic style (aspectual orientation in particular). Two psalms, one acrostic and one non-acrostic, are analyzed and their verb usage compared. Three avenues of further study are proposed.

El libro de Lamentaciones compone un retrato divino inquietante debido a su forma de emplear imágenes para describir negativamente las acciones de Dios en detrimento de su pueblo. Como efecto de lo anterior, los atributos de misericordia y bondad divina tradicionales se difuminan en una violencia que convierte a los pecadores en víctimas y a YHWH, ofendido por las rebeldías, en un victimario. A esto se añade la ausencia explícita de notas de esperanza o de cambios positivos en la actitud divina. Lamentaciones deviene, entonces, una paradoja: se trata de un libro acogido como Palabra de Dios, aunque contradictoriamente constituido de palabras contra Dios.
La presente publicación afronta este tema oscuro en el contexto de la revelación, analizando cada una de las imágenes referidas a Dios y su actuar. Como resultado, se ha encontrado un posible sentido en el uso de la imaginería la cual deja de ser el enigma por resolver para ser la clave que descifra los enigmas de este escrito bíblico: aquel de la negatividad en la descripción sobre el Señor, el de la aparente ausencia de esperanza y el de la interpretación adecuada del mensaje. La investigación consignada en esta publicación es concebida como una puerta de acceso hacia un nuevo horizonte interpretativo respecto a los contenidos de esta poesía de lamento, validando su pertinencia en todo contexto de sufrimiento y, más aún, en la actualidad.

Certain poetic features of Lamentations contribute to an ongoing preservative/cohesive function in faith communities. In form and content the reader/audience is confronted with completeness—a nation’s complete destruction, the complete range of human emotion—and with incompleteness—a fragmented people, broken institutions, unanswered theological questions.

Recent psychological research on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has demonstrated that one of the most common symptoms of the disorder is heightened or even uncontrollable anger.  In the past decade, various works in biblical studies have assessed the effects of trauma on the ancient Israelites and on the texts of the Hebrew Bible, but these have not fully explored either the connection between anger and PTSD or that between anger in the Hebrew Bible and Israelite trauma.  This article seeks to demonstrate the close relationship between trauma and rage and argues that biblical authors often locate their own traumatized rage in the figure of Yahweh.  The emotional response of Yahweh toward the Israelites is frequently presented as one of rage, blame, and contempt—a trio of socially distancing emotions.  This depiction of Yahweh results in a “theology of distance” wherein Yahweh’s furious emotionality negates the sympathy of audiences toward the traumatized Israelites.