The Authorship of Lamentations

IN contrast with many books of the O. T., Lamentations has an external tradition as to its authorship. The L.X.X. has the following preface

Καὶ ἐγένετο μεπὰ τὸ αἰχμαλωτισθῆναι τὸν ᾿Ισραὴλ καὶ ῾Ιερουσαλὴμ ἐρημωθῇναι ἐκάθισεν ῾Ιερεμίας κλαίων καὶ ἐθρήνησεν τὸν θρῆνον του`τον ἐπὶ ῾Ιερουσαλὴμ καὶ εἶπεν.

The Vulgate has the same with some additions Et factum est postquam in captivitatem redactus est Israel et Jerusalem deserta est sedit Jeremias propheta flens et planxit lamentatione hac in Jerusalem et amaro animo suspirans et ejulans dixit. The Targum begins thus

אמר ירמיהו נביא וכהנא רבא

The old Latin also has the above preface in the same words as the Vulgate, and the Syriac heads the text with the name of “Jeremiah the prophet.” On the other hand, the Masoretic text has not this preface and it was not found in the versions collected by Origen.¹

It is very difficult to say how much value is to be assigned to this preface. In its Greek form it is obviously translated Hebrew,² and so, too, in the Vulgate, where the added words suggest a different, if an allied, source. We have no information as to its date, or the authority on which it rests. This much it does seem to prove, that there was a family of Hebrew Mss. once extant in which it appeared, and which, like all the Mss. which are behind the LXX, disappeared before the predominant authority of the received text, and that this took place before the date of Aquila’s version. If this be the case, the tradition has a certain amount of value and must be taken into account with the rest of the evidence. Another tradition, and, it would seem, a later one, is found in these words of the Targum

שמעו כל עמיא אםפדא דאםפד ירמיהו על יאשיהו

and these of Jerome³ (Josias) super quo Lamentationes scripsit Jeremias quæ legunter in Ecclesia et scripsisse eum Paralip testatur liber. This tradition is based on a misunderstanding of 2 Chr. 3525, which states (1) that Jeremiah wrote an elegiac poem or Kinah about Josiah; (2) that the professional singers of the Chronicler’s time sang about Josiah in their elegies or Kinoth, (3) and that these were written “in the Kinoth.” The book of Lamentations was called “Kinoth” by the Jews,⁴ and so the error sprang up of identifying the lost book of elegies on the death of Josiah (which may have contained Jeremiah’s lost elegy) with the existing book of Kinoth. The identification is, of course, impossible. There is not one word in Lamentations which could by any ingenuity be applied to the period of Josiah. It has been suggested by Budde⁵ that 420 relates to Josiah, not to Zedekiah. But this view is quite untenable. The verse alludes to a King who was “captured by destroying forces,” which cannot apply to Josiah who was killed in battle and buried in Jerusalem, and 29 says expressly, “Her King and her princes are among the heathen.” The elegy on Josiah must be considered lost. We have, then, two traditions, one of weight, one of no weight, but they both agree in one respect—they ascribe the authorship of Lamentations to Jeremiah. We now turn to the poems themselves to see what they reveal about their author.

1. It cannot be doubted that these poems are the work of a contemporary and an eye witness of the catastrophe they deplore. The author in deepest grief describes the terrible things he has experienced. He has witnessed the empty highroads, the children dragged into captivity, the princes fainting with hunger as they fled from pursuit, the mocking laughter of the enemy, the plunder of treasures, the awful spectacle of heathen conquerors entering the Temple, the people seeking bread and offering their valuables for it, youths and maidens in captivity, priests and elders dying of famine, murder outside the city, plague inside (Ch. 1). He has seen the ruin of Zion’s fair buildings and the cessation of her sacred rites while the enemy shout in the Temple, elders sitting on the ground in sackcloth with dust on their heads, fainting children in vain asking their mothers for bread, gestures of astonishment from passers-by, the crowning horror of women eating their children, and an orgy of promiscuous slaughter (Ch. 2). He has seen the fugitives chased like birds, and has lived in an atmosphere of reproach and scorn (Ch. 3). He has watched babies dying of thirst, and noblemen accustomed to luxury lying on dungheaps, blackened and emaciated by famine, he has observed the hunger bitten victims of the plague, Zion on fire, Prophets and priests reeling about in blood-stained garments while people shout after them “Unclean”; the vain hopes that relieving forces would come, the agony of hearing that the king was captured, and the wicked joy of the Edomites (Ch. 4). Somewhat later he has seen lands and houses held by foreigners, sufferings of widows and orphans, water and wood having to be bought and food obtained at a risk to life, the oppression of slave rulers, women outraged, princes hanging by the hand, boys tottering under heavy tasks, and an end to all cheerfulness (Ch. 5).

None but an eye witness could have mingled such vivid details of misery with such outpourings of an agonized soul. And this grief is a recent experience, not a memory of distant years and sorrows long ago. The view of Loehr that any of these poems could have been the work of a man who had seen the fall of Jerusalem in his youth and who wrote these poems about it in Babylon 30 or 40 years afterwards is out of the question. If this were the fact the poems would be very different. Time would have blurred the sharp outlines of the facts and softened the violence of the grief

We forget because we must
And not because we will.

The cruel distinctness of these horrors, the hopeless misery they produced, come fresh from recent observation unsoftened by time or reflection.

2. The first four of these poems are Kinoth, elegiac poems or dirges, and it will be worth while for a little to consider the significance of this fact. The original form of the Kinah was a funeral song or death lament for an individual as appears from those composed by David, 2 Sam. 117 and 333. At a later period the Kinah began to be used in a wider sense in cases of national sorrow or disaster. These national elegies were written in a special meter, of which something will be said in a later page, and were sung or wailed to a suitable melody by a professional choir of trained women called מקוננות or חכמות (Jer. 9:16 (Heb.) 2 Chr. 35:25). The earliest elegy of this kind is found Amos 5:2, and there are extant one in Is. 14:1–21, four in Jer. and three in Ezek. Such a national or community poem must of necessity comprise topics or points of view interesting to the community and must reflect its prevailing sentiments. The griefs of the people must be expressed in terms which agree with their memories and feelings and display sympathy with them. “They are carefully elaborated poems in which no aspect of the common grief is unremembered and in which every trait which might stir a chord of sorrow or regret is brought together for the purpose of completing the picture of woe.”⁶ There is in such compositions, of course, room for the personality of the poet to show itself. His general views and usual modes of thought as well as some of his characteristic locutions are likely to appear, for these are part of the man and help to make the poet. Still, his main object would of necessity be to express the feelings of the people in whose name and on whose behalf the elegy was to be sung. If on any topic his personal feelings should not quite coincide with those of his audience he must efface himself. He could not in such compositions obtrude his individual standpoint, for, in his elegy, he has to speak not for himself but for the sorrowing community. The position of a prophet was very different. He spoke the direct revelation his heart had received. To consider the feelings of his hearers, to modify or temper his message out of regard for their sentiments would be nothing short of sin. But this bold rigidity of utterance would be quite unsuitable in a writer who sought, in a formal and artificial elegy, to represent a mourning community and give utterance to its griefs. We have been led to these observations by the fact that there are certain divergencies between the thoughts of Jeremiah the prophet and those of the author of Lamentations which have caused writers of eminence (Loehr, Peake, Budde) to pronounce that it is impossible that Jeremiah could be the author of the latter. There are two of such places. The first is 2:9 “Her prophets did not find a vision from Jahveh.” How could Jeremiah the prophet write that Perhaps he would not have expressed it just that way, if he had been uttering his individual views, but as a complaint of the mourning community it was sadly true. The false optimism of the prophets had led Judah to her ruin. Jeremiah had denounced them over and over again (6:13f, 13:13, 14:13f, 23:9–22-27–29, 37:19, etc.). The misery they had brought was an element of the people’s grief and a suitable theme for the communal lamentation. Jeremiah must have heartily agreed with the statement in 2:9, and in a poem of this kind he could hardly add, “except Jeremiah.”⁷

A somewhat similar case is the other, 4:17, which expresses the earnest longing “we” felt for the arrival of a relieving (Egyptian) force where as Jer. (37:5–10) had always declared that this hope was a vain one.⁸ But if the lament was to express what the people had felt and suffered this trait could not be left out. It was the last hope in a time of despair that the siege would be raised by this force. No Jew could forget it. Jeremiah was perhaps the only man in the city who did not share this hope, but he could hardly be expected to say so in a Kinah poem for national mourning. It is surprising that some critics (Driver, Peake, Budde) should have felt a difficulty of this kind in regard to 4:20. It is suggested that Jeremiah would not be likely to speak of Zedekiah as “the breath of our nostrils” since he had expressed a very poor opinion of that king in an oracle (Jer. 2:49–10). It will be observed that Zedekiah is not named in 4;20 and it was not his tragic fate (though that was pitiable enough) which was the chief thought here, but the fall of the Davidic monarchy. For over 400 years this dynasty had endured; its continuance had been a matter of the deepest concern to Jeremiah (17:25), and now it was ended. If he said “the breath of our nostrils is gone,” it was too sadly true. Without the Davidic king, “the anointed of Jahveh,” the Jewish state was an exanimate corpse. Jeremiah must have felt, along with the rest of the people, a hearty sorrow that there was no longer a king descended from David “under whose shade they could still exist among the nations.”

3. It has been thought (Budde, Loehr) that the aged prophet after the fall of Jerusalem had so many outward troubles and inward sorrows that he would hardly have had the rest and freedom of mind to compose these elegies. But it may well be that to a nature like Jeremiah’s the composition of these artificial and elaborate poems might in itself be a source of comfort.

For to the unquiet heart and brain
A use in measured language his
The sad mechanic exercise.
Like dull narcotics numbing pain.

For it must not be forgotten that the composition of Kinoth was no new art to him. In his youth he composed a Kinah on the death of Josiah which, as we have seen, is lost and 4 Kinoth of his are extant among his oracles (9:9b–11; 9:20–21; 22:6–7-21–23) and there are several isolated lines in his writings composed in Kinah metre (e. g., 8:19; 38:22). So he knew the rules of elegiac poetry, the methods of the wailing women, the proper melodies, and he had thus a medium ready to his hand, if he wished to express the grief of his people and his own.

It is a very interesting fact that the prosody of Jeremiah’s extant Kinah poems is just the same as that of Lam. I-IV. It will be worth while to look a little in detail at this question of Kinah metre. The rule given by Budde⁹ for Lam. I–IV is that “the verse is put together out of a longer first and a shorter second number which in the great majority of instances (weit überwiegend) stand in a relation of 3:2 to one another.” This general statement hardly puts the facts in a true light. In these four poems there are 244 lines; of these, 108 only are in a measure of 3:2. Ninety-three are equally divided, 3:3 or 2:2, and the remainder are variously irregular. The measure 3:2 predominates over any other form, but the lines which are not 3:2 are nearly three-fifths of the whole. The poet does not bind himself to the strict rule 3:2. He allows himself considerable metrical license. It is a significant fact that the same is the case in the extant Kinoth of Jeremiah. There is about the same amount of deviation from the 3:2 metre. As Cornill¹⁰ remarks, the equality of single lines was not the formal law of his metre. This is equally true of Lam. I-IV. Whether or not the author was the same, the metre is the same. But we can hardly think of anyone who a priori was more likely to write elegies than Jeremiah. His nature was elegiac; his life was an elegy. Full of love and sympathy for his people, the terrible message he had to deliver wounded him to the heart. Even as a young man he had no friends and no pleasures (15:17). He was debarred the joys of family life (16:1). He wished he had never been born (15:10, 20:14). His own neighbors tried to murder him (11:21), he was in personal danger all his life (17:18, 18:18, 37:11f, 38). It is not wonderful that such a man should write Kinoth. The marvel would be if he had not. Indeed, according to the curious theory of Duhm¹¹ he never wrote anything else. This writer picks out of the whole of his book 280 lines as the genuine work of Jeremiah, arranges them into 60 poems and says that “the verse measure is the same all through, 4 line verses with alternating 3 and 2 beats.” Whatever we may think of this performance (the result of a very free use of the emendating knife) it has this value for us it bears witness how deeply elegiac in character the ordinary writings of this Prophet are.

4. Lamentations contain very numerous reminiscences both of the characteristic thoughts and the usual locutions of Jeremiah. The more striking of these are set out here.¹²

Main Lines Of Thought

National ruin is the result of national sin —15:8, 14, 18; 3:42; 4:6; 5:7, 16.

Jer. 1:13; 4:4; 5:19; 7;20; 9:12–15; 11:9–11; 12:17; 13:9–10; 14:7, 16; 15:4; 16:10–13; 17;1, 3; 18:15–16; 19:12–13; and other places.

Sins of prophets and priests —2:14; 4:13, 15.

Jer. 2:8, 26; 6–13f; 8:1, 10; 13:13; 14:13, 18; 18:18; 23:9–40; 27, 29; and other places.

Misplaced confidence in allies —1:2, 1:9; 4:17.

Jer. 2:18, 36; 30:14; 37:5, 10.

Jeremiah was a priest (Jer. 11) and Lamentations dwells on horrors which would specially impress a priest, e.g.,

1:4, No one coming to a feast.

1:10, Heathens entering the temple, which God had forbidden.

2:6, Feast and Sabbath (Jer. 17:12–27) forgotten.

2:7, Enemies shouting in the temple like a feast day.

2:9, The exiled king without priestly Torah.

4:1, Consecrated stones lying in heaps in the streets.

Words And Phrases

(The parallel often goes deeper than the words quoted.)

1:1, ישבה בדד. Jer. 15:17, כדד ישבתי.

1:2, כלאהביה, of faithless allies, Jer. 30:14, כלמאהביך, cf. 2:33, אהבה.

1:5, שלי. Jer. 12:1 Ib.

18:9, The image of Jerusalem as a dishonoured maiden. Jer. 13:22, 26, and the word שוליה bis in Jer.

1:13, שלח־אש בעצמותי.

Jer. 20:9, בעצמותי . . . כאש, Eyes flowing down with tears.

1:16; 2:11, 18; 3:48, 49; Jer. 9:17; 13:17; 14:17; and the words in combination דמע. ירד. עיני.

1:17, םביביו neighbouring nations. Ib., Jer. 4817.

1:20, מות, for plague. Ib., Jer. 15:2; 18:21.

1:22, דוי. Jer. 818.

2:2, remembers, Jer. 7:14.

2;8, אבל אמלל, together, so Jer. 14:2.

2:11, 13; 3:48; 4:10, The breach of the daughter of my people. Jer. 6:14; 8:11, 21; 14:17; and other places. שבר שברבת עמי combined with רפא.

2:11, עיני.כלו . Jer. 14:6, כלו עיניהם.

2:14, Prophets saw תפל, Jer. 23:13, תפלה.

Ib., Prophets did not reveal guilt as they ought, Jer. 23:17–22.

Ib., משאות. Jer. 23:33.

Ib., מדוחים. Jer. 27:10, 15; הדחתי,הדיה .

2:15, עברי. שרקו, “shake their heads,” Jer. 18:16; 19:8.

2:17, עשה יה אשר אשר זמם. Jer. 51:12, גם זמם וה גם עשה

2:18, דם-אל, Jer. 14:17, תדמינה-אל. Women eating their children, 2:20; 4:10; Jer. 19:9.

Terror around, 2:22, מגורי מםביב. Jer. 6:25; 20:10; מגור מםביב.

Ib., פליט ושריד. Jer. 44:14; Ib., 42:17, words reversed.

3:5, ראש. Jer. 8:14. Ib.

3:14, הייתי שחק. Jer. 20:7, הייתי לשחוק. Wormwood and gall.

3:15, לענה. 20, לענה וראש. Jer. 9:15, ראש. 23:15, וראשלענה.

3:22, תמנו. Jer. 44:18, 76. (perhaps = .תמונו. Oettli).

3:27, בנעוריו. comp. Jer. 1:6, 7, נער.

3:29, תקוה.יש, Jer. 31:16, Ib.

3:47, פחד ופהת. Jer. 4843. פחד ופחת ופה.

3:52, צוד צדוני. Jer. 16:16, צדום. Appeal to a righteous Judge against enemies, 3:64–66, Jer. 11:20.

4:2, חדש יצד. Jer. 19:1, 76.

4:5, נשמו. Jer. 49, Ib.

4:11, ותאכל . . . ויצת אש. Jer. 17:27, ... .ואכלה והצתי אש. Prophets and priests shedding blood of righteous men.

4:13, see Jer. 26:8f; also 23:11.

4:15, כצו. Jer. 48:9, בצא תצא.

4:17, עודינו, (Kri.). Jer. 40:5, עודנו.

Ib., עזרה, foreign help. Jer. 37:7 Ib.

4:19, As to the fact, Jer. 39:4–5.

Ib., מנשרי .קלים. Jer. 4:13, קלו מנשרים.

4:21, The cup (כום) shall pass to Edom, Jer. 49:12. So Jer. 25:16, for all hostile nations.

4:22, Comp. Jer. 50:20.

5:6, בחו יד. to submit, Jer. 50:15. Sins of the fathers.

5:7, comp. Jer. 16:11; 32:18.

5:14, Cessation of joy, Jer. 7:34; 16:9.

5:16, עטרת. Jer. 13:18, Ib.

5:21, ונשובה .השיבנו (Kri.). Jer. 31:17 השיבני ואשובה.

5:22, מאם מאםתנו. Jer. 14:19, Ib.

That so many echoes of the points of view, thoughts, images, and diction of the prophecies of Jeremiah should occur in this short book would seem to be an impressive fact. But this has in many quarters not been felt at all. To some these reminiscences are only plausible (Peake), to others insufficient (Budde).¹³ These conclusions are matters of feeling, and there is no criterion by which they can be discussed. Another view that the case is one in which the differences have greater weight than the resemblances (Driver) does not seem an accurate or reasonable way of estimating literary evidence. There should be no general rule either way—resemblances and differences should be weighed in relation to their number and their force. We now proceed to consider these differences.

5. It seems to be assumed in the discussions on the subject that if Lamentations contains striking locutions which do not occur in the works of Jeremiah, that fact invalidates his authorship. Such a view is contradicted by all literature. If a poet chooses a new topic or a new manner of treatment he must inevitably use some new words. All the language of his country is known to him and he can select what word he will. In addition, if he decides to write an acrostic Kinah poem, he must choose words to fit the acrostic, and the melody, and the rules of the art, and certainly, if he finds a word to suit him he will not stop to consider whether or not he has ever used it before. Bearing this in mind and leaving out common words we note in Lamentations—

(a) Hapax Legomena.

Can we, out of these complicated and difficult discussions, this balancing of probabilities, these varying opinions as to the bearing of facts, these divergencies of feeling and taste, say that anything emerges definitely proved? This can hardly be asserted: in fact, on such a subject it is not often that a conclusion can be reached which obtains universal assent. But the writer does claim to have shown that the tradition that Jeremiah was the author of these poems is possibly true, and that as much or more may be said in favor of his authorship than can be adduced on behalf of any other view.

1) A scholion in the Syro-Hex. is thus translated by Field (Hexapla II. 747)”Secundum L.X.X. proemium est hoc Threnorum quod non positum apud religuos.”

2) See Oettli Comm., p. 200.

3) Opp. Ed. Vallarsi, VI, 904 D.

4) See Masoretic note in Baer’s Quinque, Vol. 19, and Jerome. Prol. Gal.

5) Die fünf Megilloth, p. 72.

6) Driver, Int., p. 430, 1st ed.

7) Oder hätte er bei der Klage über die falschen Propheten sich seIbst als rühmliche Ausnahme nennen sollen—Oettli.

8) “Would not Jeremiah have written Their rather than our Driver.”—

9) Die fünf Megillot, p. 71.

10) “Für Jer. war die Gleichheit der einzelnen Stichen nicht formales Grundgesetz seiner Metrik, er hat vielmehr, modern geredet, in Knittelversen gedichtet.” Die metrischen Stücke des Buches Jeremiah reconstruieret. C. H. Cornill, p. VIII.

11) Das Buch Jeremiah, p. XII.

12) Some of the matter of this section is taken from Driver, Int., 1st ed., p. 433.

13) Die Klagelieder durchaus nicht das Mass von Uebereinstimmung mit Jer.’s Sprachgebrauch darbieten das man bei seiner Verfasserschaft verlangen musste.

14) Dichter des A. B. 1.2.323, 3rd ed., comp. Robertson Smith, Enc. Brit., 9th ed., art. Lamentations.

15) Das ganze 5 gespaltene Gedicht ist nur ein grosses Trauerlied nach alter Hebräischen Anlage und Ausführung.

16) See Oettli. Comm.

17) Int. 9. ed. 465, “The poems may not be all by one author, but in spite of supposed dependence on Ezek. and 2nd Eds, at least Chs. 1, 3 produce the impression of having been written as near to B. C. 586 as Chs. 2, 4.”

18) Die fünf Megilloth, p. 75.