services of mourning with ritual “sitting” as of the situation of daily life in which the deportees had to work on the canals of Babylon, either cleaning the mud from them or watering plantations. One may suppose that there were services of mourning not only in Jerusalem “in the ruins” of the Temple (cf. Zech 7:2–3*; 8:18–19*) but also in the Babylonian gulag; v. 1* may be alluding to this (in retrospect). Perhaps, however, no cultic context at all is intended, but “only” lament for the dead, for