耶利米哀歌 {ye1-li4-mi3-ai1-ge1}
Old Testament – Major Prophets
Lamentations’ pronunciation isn’t tricky at all because… it’s English.
The keen eyes among you may have noticed that its Chinese name suggests that the author is Jeremiah 耶利米. Traditionally, this Book was indeed attributed to Jeremiah, hence placed right after the Book of Jeremiah; however, certain evidence suggested otherwise. IMO, authorship bears no impact on its significance, lessons, and what God tries to communicate to us. After all, “all Scripture is God-breathed” (2 Tim 3:16).
The structure of this Book is quite intriguing but is more obvious to those who know some Hebrew: all but the last chapter were composed in a poetic form called “acrostic poem“.
To understand acrostic poems, imagine with me a poem that has 26 verses, where the first verse begins with the letter “A”, the second with “B”, and all the way to the last one with “Z”. That’s an acrostic poem. Chapters 1-4 of Lamentations are acrostic poems in Hebrew, which has 22 letters in its alphabet, or more accurately alefbet. (Okay, Chapter 3 is different, more like AAABBB…ZZZ) On another note, Lamentations is not the only Book that employs this poetic structure. Multiple Psalms were written as acrostic poems, too.
Lamentations, as its name suggests, is not a “happy” book. It was written in light of the destruction of the temple and the exile of God’s people by the Babylonians. The unrepentant Kingdom of Judah did not learn from the destruction of Israel and made itself an enemy of God through prolonged rebellion and wickedness. Despite repeated warnings from prophets and God, they marched down the highway of ruin and reaped the fruit of desolation. The writings in Lamentations are strikingly familiar to its readers, because the grievous conditions witnessed in Lamentations had been prophesied in other Books long before any of them happened.
Nevertheless, like so many others, Lamentations pointed toward hope, repentance, and restoration. When people’s wickedness finally ran its course and dragged hope through the mud, God’s love, faithfulness, and forgiveness shone all the brighter. It is paradoxically from the bleakness of these laments we find comforting verses such as:
“Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail.”
Lam 3:22
“I say to myself, ‘The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.’”
Lam 3:24
“Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love”
Lam 3:32
The utter destruction of Judah and Israel did not end God’s story with His people. Lamentations pleaded simultaneously for people’s repentance and God’s forgiveness and against all odds, daringly called forth hope from the ashes of the two kingdoms. That very hope was eventually confirmed in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah when the Persian king Cyrus was moved by God to send the exiles back to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple. So the story continued…