The Bible, King James Version, Book 25: Lamentations
Five poems of unbearable grief, written in the ash heap of Jerusalem after the Babylonians burned it to the ground in 586 BCE. The anonymous poet gives voice to a city personified as a woman whose children have been slaughtered, whose walls are rubble, whose people starve behind siege walls. The verses ache with specific, physical suffering: infants perishing at empty breasts, elders abandoned in the dust, the beloved city's face turned to the wall. Yet this is no mere whimpering. The acrostic structure, each verse beginning with successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet, suggests a mind imposing terrible order on total chaos. And in the darkness, a filament of hope: the recognition that divine faithfulness persists even through judgment, that suffering is not the final word. This is grief ancient and immediate, the kind that still catches in the throat three millennia later. For readers who want their spirituality raw rather than sanitized, who understand that lament is itself a form of faith.
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“I am the man who has seen affliction by the rod of the Lord’s wrath. He has driven me away and made me walk in darkness rather than light; indeed, he has turned his hand against me again and again, all day long. He has made my skin and my flesh grow old and has broken my bones. He has besieged me and surrounded me with bitterness and hardship. He has made me dwell in darkness like those long dead. He has walled me in so I cannot escape; he has weighed me down with chains. Even when I call out or cry for help, he shuts out my prayer. He has barred my way with blocks of stone; he has made my paths crooked. Like a bear lying in wait, like a lion in hiding, he dragged me from the path and mangled me and left me without help. He drew his bow and made me the target for his arrows. He pierced my heart with arrows from his quiver. I became the laughingstock of all my people; they mock me in song all day long. He has filled me with bitter herbs and given me gall to drink. He has broken my teeth with gravel; he has trampled me in the dust. I have been deprived of peace; I have forgotten what prosperity is.””
— Anonymous
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Anonymous. The Bible, King James Version, Book 25: Lamentations. Lex, lex-books.com/book/the-bible-king-james-version-book-25-lamentations-20ad3c9e-2658-495c-8558-85b448a3bced.Anonymous (n.d.). The Bible, King James Version, Book 25: Lamentations. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-bible-king-james-version-book-25-lamentations-20ad3c9e-2658-495c-8558-85b448a3bcedAnonymous. The Bible, King James Version, Book 25: Lamentations. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-bible-king-james-version-book-25-lamentations-20ad3c9e-2658-495c-8558-85b448a3bced.
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