SOURCE: Guthrie, Harvey H., Jr. “Lamentations.” In The Interpreter's One-Volume Commentary on the Bible: Introduction and Commentary for Each Book of the Bible Including the Apocrypha, edited by Charles M. Laymon, pp. 405-10. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1971.

In the following essay, Guthrie provides a thematic and stylistic examination of the five poems that comprise the Book of Lamentations.

Introduction

Name and Place in Canon.

In the Hebrew Bible the book of Lamentations takes its name from its opening word, How, the characteristic beginning of a funeral dirge. The Talmud and rabbinic tradition designate it “Lamentations,” and this title is employed in the LXX, Latin, and English. In the Hebrew canon Lam. is included in the Writings as one of the 5 Scrolls and is read in the synagogue on the 9th of Ab (Jul.-Aug.), the day on which the destruction of the temple in a.d. 70 is bewailed. The...