RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Jeremiah
this service, the question of external form becomes a minor one. The disturbed conditions of his times did not minister to esthetic expression. The beauty of the book lies not in its poetic form, but in its deep and noble expression of the life of tenderness which it portrays. (F Buhl.)
III. The Lamentations of Jeremiah: This is the
name given by tradition to five elegies bearing a
close resemblance to one another and
1. Names, bewailing the sad lot which befell Place in Jerusalem and its inhabitants during
the Canon, and after the siege by the Chaldeans (587-586 B.C.). In Hebrew manuscripts and editions these elegies usually bear the title ekhah, " how," from the opening word of three of them; the Jews were, however, familiar with the designation kinoth, " lamentations " (Jerome, Preface to Lamentations, cf. Baba Bathra, 14b; LXX, Threnoi; Lat. Threni or Lamentationes) . In the Greek version, which differs in character from that of the prophecies of Jeremiah, they are placed next to the prophecies (after Baruch), and are counted with the prophecies as one book. Only in this way could twenty-two canonical books be counted (Josephus, Apion, i. 8; Origen in Eusebius, Hist, eccl., vi. 25; Jerome in Prologus galeatus). Still the number twenty-four was common, in which computation Ruth and Lamentations were counted separately and placed among the Hagiographa. This arrangement differs from that followed by the Christians, which was the same as that of the Septuagint, but is in accord with that of the Talmud (Baba Bathra 14b), which places Lamentations among the Kethubim, where they probably stood from the time of the formation of the third division of the canon.
In form the first four of these five elegies are
characterized by an acrostic use of the alphabet.
They are also composed in the rhythm
2. The Ar- which Budde has shown to be that of tistic the lament or threnody. In chaps. Form, i _jj a group of three lines in this
meter (composed of a normal and a shortened member) is placed under each of the acrostic letters; the same is true in chap, iii., except that each of the three lines (in this case a verse) begins with the same letter, which, therefore, appears three times. In chap, iv., on the other hand, each acrostic letter includes two lines. No acrostic is found in chap, v., although the elegy consists of twenty-two verses presenting the usual parallelism, though the peculiar meter of the dirge is not very manifest. The five elegies refer to the same national misfortune and have many similarities in thought and form; yet each has its own peculiar quality. So chap. i. shows the sorrowing Zion, deserted and abandoned; chap. ii. describes the act of the angry God, the just enemy, who has destroyed the city; chap. iii. presents a more individual point of view; chap. iv. describes the sad fate of the populace of the city during and after the siege; chap. v. sketches briefly the resulting miserable state of the people. That the five songs were all produced under one inspiration is psychologically improbable; but in any event they did not arise without regard to one another. Style and
language show many points of resemblance, and the historical situation is essentially the same in all. They can not have appeared during the siege itself; the misfortune is already complete, intense agony is already changing into a softer sadness, and feeling finds relief in seeking for a form of artistic expression. Ancient tradition unanimously names Jeremiah as the author. The Preface to the Septuagint declares that " after the captivity of
3. Tradi- lsraei; ancj the desolation of Jerusa-
of*A th16W ^em' Jeremian sat down weeping and ship sang this lamentation over Jerusalem and said." This same tradition appears in the Talmud and is accepted by the Church Fathers. Jerome is indeed mistaken when (on Zech. xii. 11) he refers to Lamentations the statement in II Chron. xxxv. 25, where mention is made of elegies composed by Jeremiah on the death of Josiah. Perhaps he was misled by Lam. iv. 20. Josephus had already fallen into the same error. The Chronicler's notice shows that the prophet was accustomed to compose such elegies, and was naturally qualified to compose a kina on a grand scale, treating of the fall of Jerusalem, just as Ezekiel composed a series of such " threnodies " over other cities and peoples. Many passages in the Lamentations are in agreement with the thought and diction of the prophet; indeed, a prophetic note runs through these poems. The older authorities, almost without exception, hold the traditional view; only in modern times has the Jeremianic authorship been contested, and on grounds of importance. Thenius attributed only chaps, ii. and iv. to Jeremiah, Meier chaps, i.-iii.; others, for instance, Ewald, Noldeke, Schrader, Nagelsbach, Lohr, Budde, entirely abandon Jeremianic authorship.
The arguments against Jeremiah's authorship are
partly formal and founded on esthetic grounds and
partly refer to the contents of the
4. Argu- poems and their theological quality. ments Con- Nagelsbach (Commentary, p. xi. sqq.) Jeremianic and L°hr i^ATW, 1894) have noted
Origin. statistically the agreements and differences in the vocabulary of Lamentations and of the prophecies of Jeremiah, and the probability appears to favor difference of authorship or a reediting of Jeremianic elegies. This probability is strengthened by linguistic similarities with the writings of Ezekiel. It was believed that an important distinction had been discovered between the writings of the prophet and these songs, in that these lacked the strong emphasis upon the sins of the people which would be expected from the prophet. Thus v. 7 is cited, according to which the unhappy generation suffered not so much for its own sins as for those of its forefathers (contrast Jer. xxxi. 29). That, in addition to inherited suffering, the measure has been filled up by the people's own faults and that thus a judgment has been called down upon them is a thought which runs through Lamentations also and finds particular expression in v. 16, 21. Budde finds that the consciousness of the guilt of the people is little developed in chaps, iv. and ii. (but cf. iv. 6). If Jeremiah was the author he does not here appear
Jeremiah Jeroboam