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Lamentations: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary is unavailable, but you can change that!

The poetry found in the Book of Lamentations is an eloquent expression of one man’s, and one nation’s, despair. The poet is deep in mourning as a result of the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians in the sixth century B.C.E. He looks to Israel’s own sins to explain the catastrophe, and yet he recites poignant examples of Israel’s suffering in wondering aloud if God has abandoned his people...

Jeremiah’s from the beginning, it is difficult to suggest any good reason why it was ever separated from his other writings or circulated without his name. Wiesmann’s argument (1954) that this was done for liturgical reasons, in order to group Lamentations with the other Scrolls, is without force, for the oldest listing of the Writings does not group the Scrolls together, and yet includes Lamentations (see above, “Place in the Canon”). In addition, there is evidence within the book that makes it
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