One of the most interesting of these results is the discovery of a great lyric movement among the conquered Jews, as well those in Babylon as those who remained in their much-loved home. " If I forget thee, O Jera> salem," was their dominant thought, even when surrounded by the wonders of Babylonian art ; and it naturally expressed itself in lyric verse. Ewald has done much to enable modem students to realize the vast debt which we owe to the Captivity and the subsequent period for much of the most precious part of the Psalms, and, by including his translation of the Lamen- tations in the same volume with the Psalter (he even inserts the former as a portion of the sacred hymn-book), he has brought vividly before us the essential unity of the great lyric movement referred to. We have spoken of these psalms and lamentations as expressions of a mood ; they are this most truly ; but they are something more. Nursed up on the writings of the prophets, the authors of these lyric poems were in a sense prophets, just as the prophetic writings addressed to the later Jews may to a certain extent be classed with the lyric literature. The truths which the lyric or elegiac poets had imbibed from the prophets gave a colour even to the expressions of grief, and so, monotonous as the Book of Lamentations may be, it has justly been admitted as a sacred Scripture into the Old Testament canon. The authorship of Jeremiah may be doubtful, and yet we cannot fail to
IiAlUNTATIOXa, i
INTRODUCTION TO
recognize in this short elegiac book that peculiar qnality which, in all its degrees of manifestation, the Jewish doctors agree with as in describing as inspiration.
The common theme of the Lamentations is the terrible fate which befell Jerusalem when the Chaldeans captured the city (b.O. 688) and carried away its inhabitants (less fortunate in one sense than those of the country districts) to Babylon, That they were all written at the same time is, however, to say the least, improbable ; the third, and in a still higher degree the fifth, will be found to present some striking points of dissimilarity to the rest. Let us first of aU endeavour to characterize the three which have most in common, and each of which begins with the word echah, how ! ■via. the first, the second, and the fourth. Even in this narrower group, indeed, some divergences will strike the reader, but they are not sufficient to compel ns to assume a diversity of authorship. Each elegy is in the strictest sense alphabetical (which means that every verse or half-verse or every group of verses begins with one of the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet; comp. Ps. ix., x., xxv., xxxiv., xixvii., cxix., cxlv.), but with this difference — ^that whereas in the first the initial letters come in their usual order, in the second and fourth the letter Q (pe) precedes the letter y (ayin)} Another unimportant technical divergence is that the verses of ch. i. and ii. are in the original, as a rule, composed of three lines, and those of ch. iv. of four. It may seem strange, at first sight, that so artificial a form aa the alphabetic should have been selected for elegies. But further con- sideration wiU show that it was really both natural and appropriate. These elegies were probably not so much intended for private use as for a liturgical purpose, for which the alphabetic form, so convenient for the memory, would be a great recommendation. It has for ages been the custom to read the Lamentations in the synagogues on the ninth day of Ab, the anniversary of the burning of the temple, and, as this is a very ancient fast-day (Zech. vii. 3), it is reasonable to conjecture that the Lamentations, or some of them, were from the first designed for this solemn occasion. The didactic element which now and then appears in the poems gives an additional appropriateness to the alphabetic form, as a reference to the alphabetic psalms will at once show.
The contents of these three elegies, in spite of their monotony, indicate a certain difference in the point of view of the writer or writers. The first directs the attention to the sorrowrladen Mater Dolorosa (if the application suggested by a living poet may be allowed), the widowed city, Zion. The cause of the catastrophe is but lightly touched upon, and the description
' This b in itself not more Bnrprising than other irTegularities of Hebrew poets in the handling of alphabetic versification. What is surprising is that the same violation of order ihould be found in one of the psalms which there is no ground for assigning to the author (or to any of the authors) of the Lamentations. For there can hardly be a doubt that Hitzig, Delitzsoh, and Biokell are right in transposing vers. 15 and 16 (Hebrew, 16| 17) of Ps. xxxiv. Let any one try the two modes of reading these yetaea together with th« following vene^ and judge for lumsel^
THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMIAH.
cannot he said to maintain itself at the height of the opening Terse. The second points ont the true author of Zion's calamity ; it is Jehovah, who has fulfilled his threats of old, and turned against his people like an angry warrior. The fourth has more touches than the rest which reveal (so far as pictnresqueness of detail can be accepted as evidence) the hand of an eye-witness of the tragic events. The sufEerings of various classes, due to God's anger at their sins, are affectingly described, and the malignant joy of the Bdomites represented, not merely as a recollection (Ps. cxxxvii. 7), but as a present fact. The second and the fourth are generally considered the most striking of the elegies from a poetical point of view.