“I weep for you with all the letters of the alphabet.”
– Chaim Grade, Yiddish novelist, mourning the 1952 murder of
twenty-four Jewish Russian intellectuals, which was ordered by Stalin
Chapter 1
1 Alas! How can this be? Jerusalem, the once great and populous city, the crown jewel among city states, now sits alone, like a widow: forlorn, bereft, servile!
2 Bitterly she weeps through the night, tears running down her cheeks. There is no one to tender her loving comfort. All her presumed friends have betrayed her. They are now her enemies.
3 Consumed by misery and overwhelmed by abject servitude, Judah is consigned to exile, with no prospect of rest or respite. All the forces of persecution have placed her in dire straits.
4 Desolate of holiday pilgrims, the very streets of Zion mourn. Her gates are all deserted. Her priests sigh in despair. Her young daughters anguish. She is bitter and despondent.
5 Enemies of Zion are ascendant! Her detractors are serene and sated. God has chastened Jerusalem for her many transgressions. She sees her infant young led into captivity by the enemy.
6 Fair Zion is deprived of all her glory. Her princely leaders now roam about like deer: in desperate search of pasture, powerless as they flee before the predator.
7 Gone is all she cherished in former times. Now suffering pain and degradation, Jerusalem has no one to support her. Her people have fallen into the hands of an enemy who derides her undoing.
8 How grievous must be Jerusalem’s sin! She is an outcast. Those who once esteemed her now hold her in contempt, for they have seen her debased and dishonored. She herself gasps and recoils.
9 Impurity sullies her! She can give no thought to the future. She has fallen so terribly low; she is disconsolate. See, Lord, how the enemy has compounded my anguish!
10 Jerusalem’s enemies have laid hands upon her and all she holds dear. She has beheld foreigners—debarred by Your command from even entering Your covenantal community—invading her very Sanctuary.
11 Keeping themselves alive by trading prized possessions for food, her groaning populace searches for bread. Look, Lord! See my wretchedness!
12 Look about, all you passersby, and see. Is there any pain like that which I have suffered? That which I have borne? That which the Lord, in His righteous wrath, has inflicted upon me? May you never know the like!
13 My very bones burn with the fire God dispatched from on high; I am beset, ensnared in the net God Himself spread for me. He has left me desolate in an age of misery.
14 Neck bowed by the heavy yoke of my transgressions, I bear a burden imposed on me by God’s own hand. My strength is gone. The Lord has reduced me to so lowly a state, I shall never rise again.
15 Our God has repudiated all the men of stature in my midst. He has designated this season for the predation of our youth. He has trampled, as in a wine press, virginal Fair Judea.
16 Plaintively I bewail these losses, my eyes filled with tears. Any measure of comfort, of spiritual recovery, is but a distant hope. My children, too, are inconsolable. The enemy is triumphant.
17 Quite without anyone to comfort her, Zion extends her hands in vain supplication. At God’s command, Jacob is beset, surrounded by his enemies. Jerusalem is a befouled outcast in their midst.
18 Right the Lord is, for I have violated His word. Hear me, fellow nations; behold my anguish: my young sons and daughters have been taken into captivity.
19 So I call out to those who have professed their love for me, but they have deceitfully turned against me. My priests and my elders have perished in the city, as they searched for food in their desperate effort to survive.
20 Take note of my distress, Lord: my innermost soul is in torment! My heart is broken within me, for I know how wrong, how faithless I have been. The sword may threaten outside, but it is my inner recesses where I sense death.
21 Upon hearing my sighs, none came to comfort me. All my enemies heard of my misfortune and rejoiced that You have brought about the recompense You threatened. May they suffer the same fate!
22 View their Wickedness, and eXecute justice upon them, just as You have penaliZed me for my many transgressions. My sighing is endless; I am sick at heart.
Chapter 2
1 Alas! How can this be? The Lord in His anger has utterly rejected Fair Zion. From the very heavens, He has cast majestic Israel down to Earth, sparing, in His day of wrath, not even the Sanctuary that was His footstool.
2 Broken and battered are the dwelling places of Jacob. Mercilessly, the Lord has, in His anger, razed to the very ground the fortress strongholds of Fair Judea. The kingdom and its nobles are profaned.
3 Cut down is the pride of Israel! In His anger, God has withdrawn His protective right hand in the very presence of the foe! He has loosed a raging, all-consuming fire upon Jacob.
4 Deploying His bow like a sworn enemy, taking aim like a bitter foe, God has slain all He formerly looked upon with such favor and delight. He has poured out His wrath like fire upon Fair Zion’s shrine.
5 Executing His onslaught like a foe, God has laid waste to Israel, laid waste her fortifications, destroyed her fortress strongholds. He has multiplied weeping and wailing, keening and crying in Fair Judea.
6 Felling His own Tabernacle like a crop ripe for harvest, the Lord has destroyed His cultic center. Zion’s festivals and Sabbaths are consigned to oblivion. In His fierce anger, God has renounced king and priest.
7 God has rejected His altar. He has spurned His Temple and ceded to the enemy the walls of our sacred citadel. It is now they who raise a commotion in the House of the Lord, as on a Festival day.
8 He determined to destroy, to dispatch the walls of Fair Zion. The Lord was calculating in His resolve and did not withdraw His hand from the destructive plan. He brought grief to every wall and rampart; they anguish together.
9 In ruins lie her gates; her beams and buttresses are broken. Her king and her nobles have been exiled. Torah is no more. Her prophets are granted no further vision from the Lord.
10 Jerusalem’s elders sit low on the ground, wrapped in sackcloth, placing dust upon their heads in mourning for Fair Zion. The young daughters of Jerusalem are bowed in abject grief.
11 Keening and weeping at such length that my eyes have no more tears, I am aggrieved to my very core. I spew bitter bile on the ground at the downfall of my beautiful nation, at the sight of children and suckling infants sheltering in the streets of a once renowned city.
12 Languishing like those mortally wounded, asking for their mothers: “Where is the grain and wine?” Their tender lives expire in the street, clutched to their mothers’ bosoms.
13 My beloved Jerusalem, how can I do you justice in describing your beauty? With what images can I console you, innocent Fair Zion? Your tragedy is as profound as the sea. Who will bring you healing?
14 Negligent prophets spoke only of trivial, unimportant matters. They did not address your corruption so as to restore you to your proper course. Their prophecies dwelt on superficial trivialities.
15 Onlookers wave dismissively at the very sight of you. They hiss and shake their heads at Fair Jerusalem, the city once celebrated for its consummate beauty, a joy to all the Earth.
16 Petulant enemies jeer at you, hissing and gnashing their teeth. They say: “We have destroyed her! How we have waited for this day; now it has finally come about!”
17 Quashing His own inclination to mercy, the Lord has made good His threatened course. He has carried out the devastating sentence He prescribed in ages past. Now your prideful enemies, your bitter foes can rejoice over You.
18 Rest not your eyes! Grant yourself no respite! The walls of Fair Zion cry their hearts out; let your tears flow like a mighty stream, day and night.
19 Stand ready! Call out in the night, at the earliest of watches. Pour out your heart like water in the very presence of the Lord. Extend your hands to Him in prayerful intercession for the lives of starving infants, expiring at every street corner!
20 Take note, Lord! Behold the victims You have dealt with so heartlessly! Mothers consuming their own fruit: helpless newborn babies! Priest and prophet: slain, Lord, in Your own Temple!
21 Underfoot, young and old alike lie in the street. Our young daughters and our sons, felled by the sword. It is You who killed them on Your day of anger. You butchered them. You showed no mercy.
22 Vindictive foes have done away with children I struggled to raise and to nurture. On the Lord’s day of Wrath, none survived eXtermination, none whom You called to account escaped Your blaZing fury.
Chapter 3
1 Affliction has been my constant lot, subject to the rod of God’s own wrath.
2 Absolute darkness drives my destiny, impels me to my fate.
3 Again and again, throughout the day, His hand has struck at me.
4 Beaten until my flesh and skin are worn away, He has broken my bones.
5 Buffeted by misfortune, I am immured in my own misery.
6 Benighted as those long dead, I dwell in gloom and obscurity.
7 Confined as I am, I cannot escape. My chains weigh heavily upon me.
8 Cry and plead as I may, my prayers go unheeded.
9 Confounding my path with great obstacles, He has left me nowhere to turn.
10 Doom portends from the Lord; He is a bear on the hunt, a prowling lion.
11 Disrupting my life’s course, He has left me in a wretched state.
12 Deploying His bow against me, He takes aim and looses His arrows.
13 Eviscerated am I by the lethal cache within his quiver.
14 Enduring the mockery of the nations, I am made a laughingstock.
15 Enduring a full portion of bitterness, I have had my fill of gall.
16 Flinging me down into the dust, He has ground my teeth with gravel.
17 Forget contentment! My soul is bereft of peace.
18 Forsaking all hope of recovery, I acknowledge before God: “I am lost.”
19 Gall and poison recall my affliction, they mirror my misery.
20 Grieved by recurring memories, my spirit is brought so very low.
21 Grasping for hope, I take this truth to heart:
22 Heavenly grace is not entirely ended; God’s mercy is never exhausted.
23 How abundant is Your faithfulness, renewed with every morning.
24 He is my portion, my soul insists. I therefore maintain hope in Him.
25 It is good to trust in the Lord, to seek Him and so gain His favor.
26 It is good to nurture silent hope, to await the Lord’s salvation.
27 It is good to shoulder this task beginning in one’s youth.
28 Just wait in lonely silence, for this is the moral load imposed by God.
29 Judicious abasement is our course; there may still be hope.
30 Just or not, forbear, welcome the humiliating blows of your attackers.
31 Know that the Lord does not reject in perpetuity.
32 Kindness abounding, God shows mercy after His corrective measures.
33 Key to His justice: God does not inflict gratuitous suffering.
34 Lowly prisoners trampled underfoot?
35 Lawful rights shamelessly denied?
36 Laxity in defense of justice? These the Lord will not abide.
37 Man’s plans will come to naught, unless the Lord ordains it.
38 Misfortune and success alike emanate from the divine will.
39 Misguided are our grievances. Let us regret only our own sins.
40 Note well and thoughtfully our ways. Let us turn back to the Lord.
41 Not our hands but our hearts we must lift up to God in Heaven.
42 Noxious sins we have committed, and You have not forgiven us.
43 Openly pursuing us and cloaked in anger, You have slain without mercy.
44 Obscuring Yourself as in a cloud, You remain impervious to our pleas.
45 Objects of disgust and revulsion have You made us among the nations.
46 Perpetually our enemies decry us.
47 Panic and peril are our lot, insecurity and instability.
48 Pools of water issue from my eyes at the downfall of my beautiful people.
49 Quailing and crying without end, I find no relief.
50 Quietude eludes me. May God in Heaven look upon my plight.
51 Quaking with grief, I see all that has befallen the daughters of my people.
52 Relentlessly my foes hunt me, as those who stalk a game bird.
53 Relegating my life to the pit, they hurled rocks at me.
54 Rising waters engulfed me; I was sure I was finished.
55 Sinking to the darkest depths, I called upon Your name, O Lord!
56 Shut not Your ears; hear my voice, my plea, my entreaty!
57 Salvation was forthcoming as I called upon You. You said: “Have no fear!”
58 Taking up my cause, Lord, You redeemed my life.
59 Think of the wrongs my enemies have inflicted. Divine Judge, bring me justice!
60 Their vindictive plots against me surely do not escape Your attention.
61 Ugly invective and unsavory scheming against me, You have heard it all.
62 Uttering threats, my enemies plot against me all day long.
63 Unstinting, my foes’ every movement is orchestrated to harm me.
64 Vengeance Will be Yours, Lord. VeX them as befits their crimes.
65 Vouchsafe for them only heartache. Your curse be upon them!
66 Vanquish them! In Your Zealous wrath, root them out from under the very heavens of God!
Chapter 4
1 Alas! How can this be? That which was golden has grown tarnished. Once lustrous gold is dull and debased. Precious gems lie discarded in the gutter.
2 Beloved children of Zion—gold in their own right—Alas! They are now discounted as earthen shards, the leavings of some unknown artisan. How can this be?
3 Could jackals deny their young? Refuse to suckle their pups? Yet my once beautiful nation has descended into just such cruelty, like scavenger birds abandoning their nestlings in the desert.
4 Desperate and destitute, suckling infants thrust out their tongues in thirst; young children ask for bread, but not a slice is to be had.
5 Elites who once feasted on delicacies expire in the streets; those raised in luxury are glad to eat from garbage heaps.
6 Forsooth, the punishment of my beloved nation exceeds even that imposed upon Sodom, which was destroyed in but a passing moment, with no such protracted suffering.
7 Gentlemen once purer than the driven snow, as wholesome and hale as milk, their radiant complexions ruddier than rubies,
8 Have grown ashen and sickly, unrecognizable as they roam the streets, their skin hanging on bones now brittle as kindling wood.
9 It is better to die by the sword than to fall victim to hunger, succumbing to stabbing hunger pangs, without even weeds or wild plants to sustain you.
10 Judean women, renowned for their compassion, have been reduced to cannibalizing their own children, just to survive amid the destruction of a once beautiful nation.
11 Kindling a fire in Zion which razed it to its very foundations, the Lord has loosed His full measure of fury, pouring out His blazing wrath.
12 Landed nobles, kings and their peoples will hardly believe that such vile enemies could penetrate the gates of Jerusalem.
13 Measured was this punishment for the sins of her prophets, the iniquity of her priests, who tolerated the shedding of innocent blood in her midst.
14 None could so much as touch their garments in veneration, so soiled were they with blood, as they wandered aimlessly through the streets.
15 “Off with you! You carriers of defilement!” they would cry at their approach. “Off with you! Stay away! Do not touch us!” So they just roamed and rambled about endlessly. Even other nations said “You may no longer dwell among us.”
16 Providence has expelled them. God will countenance them no more, just as they no longer show deference to their priests, nor are they gracious toward their elders.
17 Quietly we have waited; expectantly we wait still, but the nation is powerless to act. Even now it is in vain; our search for assistance only strains our eyes.
18 Routed and driven from the very streets, our end is at hand. Our days are done; the end has come.
19 Swifter than eagles in flight were those who pursued us. They drove us into the mountains; in the wilderness they lay in wait for us.
20 The Lord’s anointed king, our salvation, our very life’s breath, was caught up in their snares, he whose protection afforded us the opportunity to live as a nation among others.
21 Unto you, Fair Edom—dwelling in the Land of Uz—this bitter cup will pass in due course. In your drunkenness, you will reveal your shame.
22 Visiting fitting punishment upon you, Fair Edom, God will expose your sinfulness. But He Will eXile You no further, Fair Zion; your punishment is complete.
Chapter 5
1 Remember what has become of us, Lord. Just look and see our deplorable condition.
2 Our rightful inheritance has been usurped by strangers. Our homes have gone to outsiders.
3 We have been orphaned, bereft of a father. Our mothers are as widows.
4 We must pay to drink our own water. Every scrap of firewood comes at a price.
5 Our pursuers are breathing down our very necks. Though exhausted, we have no prospect of rest.
6 We have turned to Egypt, imploring them for relief, and to Assyria to provide us with bread.
7 Our fathers sinned and are no more, and we suffer the consequences of their transgressions.
8 Slaves rule over us and there is no one to free us from their clutches.
9 We obtain bread at the risk of our very lives; mortal danger is everywhere.
10 Our skin burns like an oven; our hunger has left us feverish.
11 They have ravished women in Zion, our young daughters in the towns of Judah.
12 They have hanged our princely leaders with their own hands, sparing not even the elderly.
13 Young men are forced to carry millstones; young boys stumble under the weight of firewood.
14 The men of experience and wisdom no longer convene to offer counsel; young men have desisted from their music.
15 Our very capacity for joy is extinguished; our jubilation has turned into mourning.
16 The crown has fallen from our head. Oh! Woe! All because of our sins.
17 Our hearts are sick over this! Our eyes are beclouded,
18 Because of Mount Zion, reduced to ruins, now the haunt of foxes.
19 Though You, Lord, will reign forever. Your throne is secure for all generations.
20 How could You so thoroughly forsake us, abandoning us for so very long?
21 Allow us to return to You, Lord, and we will return in sincere contrition; renew us as in days long ago!
22 Or have You absolutely rejected us? Are You that thoroughly infuriated with us?
Allow us to return to You, Lord, and we will return in sincere contrition; renew us as in days long ago!
Notes on Translation
The goals of this translation are threefold. The first is to render the meaning of the Hebrew with reasonable accuracy, remaining faithful to the original, and the second is to replicate the pattern and effect of acrostics without unduly altering the content. It is the defining assumption of this translation that the acrostic form is critical to the message of the book, its ritual function, and its literary artistry. Finally, the third goal is to provide an accessible and felicitous English version that will serve the academic demands of the student and the standards of the scholar but no less so the spiritual and liturgical needs of the individual worshipper and congregation.
The English alphabet, at twenty-six letters, is longer than the Hebrew aleph-bet with its twenty-two letters. The final verse (or, in chapter 3, verses) of each acrostic chapter thus begins with the letter V: for example, “View their wickedness….” To maximize the acrostic effect of the translation in English, each V verse also includes the letters W, X, Y, and Z, which are highlighted, even though they are not necessarily at the beginning of words: for example, “He Will eXile You no further, Fair Zion.” The anomalous change in the order of the peh and ayin verses in chapters 2–4 is not reflected in this translation.
For a study of the function of acrostic in biblical literature generally and the book of Lamentations specifically, see Joseph H. Prouser, “Darkness on the Face of the Deep: Lamentations as Midrash on Creation,” Conservative Judaism 56, no. 4 (2004), 37–42. For a discussion of constrained writing in biblical translation, see Joseph H. Prouser, Initial Instructions: A Translation Celebrating the Book of Genesis in Lipogram (Ben Yehuda, 2016), xi–xvii, 97–102. The title of this translation and its epigraph are taken from Chaim Grade, “Elegy for the Murdered Yiddish Writers” (Ikh veyn af aykh mit ale oysyes fun dem alef-beys). The victims of Stalin’s purge were members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee.
1:1 How can this be? On the interrogatory nature of the term eikhah, see Kenneth Brander, “Between ‘Eicha–Lamentations’ and ‘Ayeka–Where Are You?,’” Times of Israel (blog), July 20, 2018, https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/between-eicha-lamentations-ayeka-where-are-you/, who writes: “Eicha, God; how? How did we get to the point that there is such a rift between Your ‘chosen people’ and Yourself?” See also Marita Anderson, “Eicha: The Most Difficult of Questions,” Atlanta Jewish Times, August 12, 2016, and commentary below on 4:2 and 5:22.
forlorn, bereft, servile While these adjectives are not attested explicitly in the Hebrew, they dramatize and clarify the force of the “widow” imagery: the social displacement, emotional isolation, and material desperation of the widow in the biblical world.
1:2 presumed friends Compare NJPS: “allies.”
1:3 Judah This form of the exonym is used for the national designation Yehudah. When used in its more poetic, combined, metaphorical form (bat Yehudah, betulat bat Yehudah), “Judea” is used. See, e.g., 1:15; 2:2, 5.
rest or respite This translation reflects the alliteration of [lo] matsa Manoah.
dire straits About the concluding words of this verse, bein hametsarim, NJPS notes “meaning of Hebrew uncertain.” For a brief discussion of the term, see Joseph H. Prouser, “Say Little, Do Much: The Three Weeks,” Crescent City Jewish News, July 14, 2023.
1:12 May you never know the like! The phrase loʾ aleikhem is moved from the beginning of the verse for clarity.
1:16 Any measure of comfort, of spiritual recovery, is but a distant hope. Compare NJPS: “Far from me is any comforter / Who might revive my spirit.”
1:21 May they suffer the same fate! In direct contradiction to the sentiment in 1:12, “May you never know the like.” This dramatic contrast evinces the disorientation and conflicted emotional state of the bereft mourner.
2:1 utterly rejected This translation identifies yaʿiv as derived from toʿeivah, which is often rendered “abomination”
2:5 weeping and wailing, keening and crying This reflects the assonance of taʾaniyyah vaʾaniyyah.
2:8 determined to destroy, to dispatch The threefold alliteration reflects the assonance in ḥashav… lehashḥit ḥomat. The repetition of the guttural ḥet onomatopoetically suggests a choking death rattle, hence, “to dispatch.” Compare Genesis 22: vayyiqaḥ et hamaʾakhelet lishḥot et beno.
2:9 beams and buttresses are broken This reflects the threefold assonance in ibbad veshibbar beriḥeha.
2:10 Jerusalem’s elders sit low on the ground…mourning for Fair Zion. This translation avoids the unsolicitous, because historically charged, “Elders of Zion.” See NJPS.
2:12 like those mortally wounded, asking for their mothers Treating ḥalal (“mortally wounded”) as the subject of leʾimotam yoʾmru (“asking for their mothers”) is based on the tragic, if well-documented history of battlefield wounded calling out for their mothers. See, for example, “‘Mother!’ The Cry of War’s Wounded; Mrs. Philip Snowden, Here, Calls Their Appeal the Most Terrible Feature of Battle,” New York Times, June 27, 1915. Viscount Snowden was a member of Parliament and the first Labour Party Chancellor of the Exchequer. See also “When Soldiers Cried for Morphine, Their Mothers,” Morning Call, May 27, 2002.
2:14 trivial, unimportant matters This is a translation of shavʾ vetafeil. As William Bennett observed, “If we are surrounded by the trivial and the vicious, it is all too easy to make our peace with it,” quoted in John Hood, “What Bill Bennett Used to Understand,” National Review, August 25, 2016.
2:19 Stand ready! The Hebrew word here is commonly translated, “arise,” “rise,” or “get up.” As suggested by the statement of Urban League president Marc Morial: “We stand ready to work together, where possible, in helping rebuild not only homes and businesses, but most importantly, lives of those who so desperately need our help.”
2:20 heartlessly. . . . helpless The translation captures a symmetry reflecting the ironic etymological connection of ʿolalta and ʿolalei: God toys cruelly with the People of Israel, while loving mothers dandle their infants.
3:5 immured This is a translation of banah ʿalay vayyiqaf. To immure is literally “to enclose within walls,” here, in biting contrast to the demolition of Jerusalem’s city walls; see, e.g., 2:7, 8, 18. Immurement was a particularly cruel (and slow) form of execution, mentioned by Thucydides in his History of the Peloponnesian Wars: “there was no length to which violence did not go; sons were killed by their fathers, and suppliants dragged from the altar or slain upon it; while some were even walled up in the temple of Dionysus and died there.” See also Sir Walter Scott’s notes to his epic poem “Marmion”: “among the ruins of the abbey of Coldingham were some years ago discovered the remains of a female skeleton which, from the shape of the niche, and the position of the figure seemed to be that of an immured nun.” Apt parallels to the subject matter of Lamentations, both of these sources describe desecrations in places of worship.
3:6 Benighted as those long dead, I dwell in gloom and obscurity. “Benighted” (bemaḥshakim) as in John Milton’s “He that has light within his own clear breast May sit in the centre, and enjoy bright day: But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts Benighted walks under the mid-day sun; Himself his own dungeon.”
3:23 How abundant is Your faithfulness, renewed with every morning. Both the liturgical timing and the specific language of Modeh Ani were inspired by this verse. It is intriguing that our first prescribed words of prayer each day, taught to the youngest of children, are drawn from Lamentations. For additional liturgical references to Lamentations, see also 3:66; 4:11; 5:21.
3:28 moral load See discussion of this term in Laura Frances Callahan, “Motherhood and the Moral Load,” Think 20, no. 58 (2021), 55–68.
3:40 let us turn back to the Lord Just past the mid-point of the book (3:34), this verse anticipates the contrition and penitence prescribed in the penultimate 5:21 (“Allow us to return to You”), providing internal symmetry to an already exceedingly structured book.
3:47 Panic and peril…insecurity and instability. The alliteration is based on paḥad vafaḥat…hasheiʾt vehashaver.
3:48 beautiful people This translation reflects the image of the nation personified repeatedly in Lamentations as an innocent young girl: bat ʿami.
3:50 Quietude eludes me. This translation is inspired by Maya Angelou: “In silence we listen to ourselves, and in the quietude, we may even hear the voice of God.”
3:59 Divine Judge, bring me justice! Here I am approximating poetic repetition of the Hebrew verb root in shaftah mishpati. Compare Abraham’s plea in Genesis 18:25: “Will the Judge (shofet) of all the Earth not do justice (mishpat)?” The image is enshrined in the American Declaration of Independence (“Appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world”).
3:61 ugly…unsavory This translation reflects the assonance of herpatam…mashevotam.
3:63 orchestrated to harm me This plays on the musical nuance of manginatam (verb root nun-gimel-nun).
3:66 Vanquish them! In Your zealous wrath, root them out from under the very heavens of God! See commentary on 4:11; the conclusion of the Haggadah passage, shefokh hamatkha.
4:2 How can this be? This is the only use of the word eichah outside the opening words of chapters 1, 2, and 4. Its reprise here is unexpected and jarring. To capture this effect, the question (“How can this be?”) is displaced, separated from the interjection “Alas!”
4:7 wholesome and hale This translation suggests the assonance in zaku nezireha.
4:10 cannibalizing their own children, just to survive The horror here suggested—arguably the most disturbing in an already unsettling book—may well be hyperbolic stock imagery of disaster. See the responsum of Rabbi Ephraim Oshry, Responsa from the Holocaust, ed. B. Goldman; trans. Y. Leiman (Judaica Press, 2001), #112, “Cannibalism”: “One cannot imagine, let alone describe, the hunger that raged in the concentration camps and the ghettoes among the Jews. Even so, the Jewish people did not descend from their level of sanctity; they never ate human flesh.”
beautiful nation See comment on 3:48 above.
4:11 pouring out His blazing wrath This verse is the basis of the bitter expression in the Passover Haggadah: shefokh hamatkha (“Pour out Your wrath”).
4:13 who tolerated the shedding of innocent blood The prophets and priests did not personally shed blood. Compare b. Sotah 46b, which comments on the expiatory ritual of the heifer killed in response to an unsolved murder (Deuteronomy 21:1–6).
4:15 roamed and rambled This translation reflects the alliteration of ki natsu gam-naʿu.
4:16 countenance This word reflects penei Adonai…penei kohanim.
4:17 Quietly we have waited; expectantly we wait still This translation captures the double formulation of betsipiyyateinu tsipinu. The cadence and rhetorical effect intended here are modeled on Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address, which is famously replete with biblical imagery and allusion: “Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, (that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away).”
4:18 Our days are done This phrase is incorporated into the poetry of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (“The Day is Done”) and the music of Peter Yarrow (“Day is Done”), as well as the lyrics popularly (although not officially) associated with the military bugle call “Taps” (“Day is done; gone the sun”).
4:20 salvation This word evokes the theologically charged messianic nuance of meshiaḥ Adonai.
4:21 Land of Uz It is not clear whether the biblical land of Uz is a real location or a fictional one. Utz may carry the meaning of “counsel,” which would be especially fitting in the context of Job. This verse might accordingly be rendered “Unto you, Fair Edom—heed my counsel—this bitter cup will pass in due course. In your drunkenness, you will reveal your shame.”
5:5 breathing down our very necks That is, ʿal tsavvaʾreinu nirdafnu. Compare NJPS: “We are hotly pursued.”
5:15 our jubilation has turned into mourning Alternatively: “The Sabbath, the source of our joy and jubilation, has turned into a time for mourning.”
5:16 Oh! Woe! This translation evokes the formality of oy naʾ.
5:18 haunt of foxes See “Fox Spotted along Walls of Temple Mount Sparks Talk of Prophecy,” Jerusalem Post, July 27, 2023 (Tishah b’Av 5783).
5:20 How could You This translation evinces indignant incredulity, as in Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler: “How could you do such a thing! To that harmless old soul!” The rhetorical question here introduces the interrogative voice with which the book concludes; see 5:22.
5:21 Allow us to return to You This expression is in the prayer recited at the conclusion of the weekday, Sabbath, and holiday Torah service liturgies.
5:22 have You…Are You…? The final verse is rendered in the interrogative, which befits the devastated bewilderment of a nation stripped of its land, sovereignty, and religious cult. It also reflects the pained and perplexed refrain of Lamentations, the only book of the Hebrew Bible whose very name is a question: Eikhah?! “How can this be? How could this possibly have befallen us?” So, too, the incredulous “Are You that thoroughly infuriated with us?” Understanding this verse as a question places Lamentations in the rarified scriptural company of Jonah and Nahum, both of which conclude with questions. Furthermore, ending a book with a question in order to dramatize the tragic nature, dystopian vision, or social criticism of the work is a well-established literary pattern. Examples include Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (“And it is this which frightens me: Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?”), Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (“Are there any questions?”) and Ernest Hemingway’s biblically allusive The Sun Also Rises (“‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Isn’t it pretty to think so?’”).
5:21 [reprise] Allow us to return to You In the liturgical chanting of Lamentations on Tishah b’Av, the entire verse is customarily repeated in unison following 5:22 in order to conclude the reading. This avoids concluding with the more discouraging strains of 5:21.
Joseph H. Prouser is rabbi of Temple Emanuel of North Jersey in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey, and editor of this journal.