Amazon Prime Free Trial
FREE Delivery is available to Prime members. To join, select "Try Amazon Prime and start saving today with FREE Delivery" below the Add to Cart button and confirm your Prime free trial.
Amazon Prime members enjoy:- Cardmembers earn 5% Back at Amazon.com with a Prime Credit Card.
- Unlimited FREE Prime delivery
- Streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows with limited ads on Prime Video.
- A Kindle book to borrow for free each month - with no due dates
- Listen to over 2 million songs and hundreds of playlists
Important: Your credit card will NOT be charged when you start your free trial or if you cancel during the trial period. If you're happy with Amazon Prime, do nothing. At the end of the free trial, your membership will automatically upgrade to a monthly membership.
-20% $23.87$23.87
Ships from: Amazon.com Sold by: Amazon.com
$19.55$19.55
FREE delivery January 28 - February 12
Ships from: Reuseaworld Sold by: Reuseaworld
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Lamentations (Two Horizons Old Testament Commentary) Paperback – September 3, 2010
Purchase options and add-ons
The question at the heart of this unusual engagement with the text is “How can Lamentations function as Christian scripture?” Parry argues that the key to answering this question is to follow the ancient liturgical tradition of the church and to see the text in the light of the death and resurrection of Israel’s Messiah ― Jesus. According to Parry, Lamentations is Israel’s Holy Saturday literature ― the cries of those caught between the death of Jerusalem and its resurrection. In this context Christians are able to make connections between this anguished Israelite poetry, the sufferings of Jesus, and the sufferings of the world.
These biblical-theological links have the potential to open up fresh and imaginative theological, doxological, and pastoral encounters with a sadly neglected biblical book.
- Print length272 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherWm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
- Publication dateSeptember 3, 2010
- Dimensions6.14 x 0.69 x 9.21 inches
- ISBN-100802827144
- ISBN-13978-0802827142
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now.
Frequently bought together
Customers who bought this item also bought
Editorial Reviews
Review
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Lamentations
By Robin ParryWilliam B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
Copyright © 2010 Robin ParryAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8028-2714-2
Contents
Abbreviations.....................................................................................xIntroduction......................................................................................1The Two Horizons..................................................................................1Authorship, Date, and Place of Composition........................................................3The Exilic Context of Lamentations................................................................5The Ancient Near Eastern Context of Lamentations..................................................8The Poetry of Lamentations........................................................................9The Structure of Lamentations.....................................................................15The Canonical Locations of Lamentations...........................................................18The Theology of Lamentations in Key Modern Studies................................................19Sin and Punishment in Covenant Context............................................................28Hope in Covenant Context..........................................................................31Present Suffering.................................................................................34Lamentations 1: No Comfort........................................................................35The Narrator Speaks (1:1-11)......................................................................43Lady Zion Speaks (1:12-22)........................................................................56Lamentations 2: Wrath.............................................................................66Structure.........................................................................................71The Narrator Describes God's Destructive Anger Against Zion (2:1-10)..............................73The Narrator Reacts to Zion's Destruction (2:11-19)...............................................79Zion's Prayer of Protest (2:20-22)................................................................84Lamentations 3: Hope..............................................................................86The Suffering, Despair, and Hope of the Valiant Man (3:1-24)......................................96The Valiant Man Offers General Wise Advice on Suffering (3:25-39).................................102The Valiant Man Calls Israel to Repent and Leads a Community Lament (3:40-51).....................115The Valiant Man's Salvation: Past and Future (3:52-66)............................................119Lamentations 4: Siege and Salvation...............................................................128Introduction......................................................................................132The Neglected Children and the Starving Inhabitants (4:1-10)......................................134YHWH Punishes the City and the Sinful "Holy" Men (4:11-16)........................................138Community: Hunted and Caught (4:17-20)............................................................140"Prophetic" Voice: An "Oracle" of Judgment and Salvation (4:21-22)................................142Lamentations 5: Restore Us........................................................................144Theological Horizons of Lamentations..............................................................159Jewish and Christian Liturgical Use of Lamentations and Hermeneutics..............................159Lamentations in the Context of Jeremiah...........................................................161Lamentations in the Context of Isaiah 40-55.......................................................162Lamentations in the Context of the New Testament..................................................168Expanding Contexts: Lamentations and Christian Anti-Semitism......................................174Expanding Contexts: Lamentations and Political Theology...........................................176Lamentations and the Rule of Faith................................................................180Does Christian Interpretation Neutralize Lamentations?............................................191The Anger of God and "The Day of YHWH"............................................................193Theodicy and Divine Suffering.....................................................................201The Place of Lament in Christian Spirituality.....................................................206Lamentations and Ethical Reflection...............................................................228Bibliography......................................................................................237Name Index........................................................................................249Scripture Index...................................................................................251Introduction
The Two HorizonsWestern cultures are notoriously averse to pain and tragedy. We spend an extraordinary amount of money and effort seeking to insulate ourselves against life's vicissitudes. All kinds of precautions are taken to ensure the maximal safety of the environments we must inhabit — our homes, our workplaces, our schools, our social space, our transport, our public places — and, just in case something does go wrong, we are offered just about every type of insurance one could dream of. We do not want sorrow to knock at our doors and, when it does, we do not know what to do with it. Our default mode is to keep it out of sight and pretend that it is not there.
Unlike our Victorian forebears, we are no longer shy about sex, and we have innumerable ways to speak about sexual intercourse but we are hopelessly lost for words when confronted with grief and death. We don't know what to do, where to look, what to say. Increasingly we lack the social practices, words, and concepts necessary to grasp our pain by the horns and stare it in the face. We have been robbed of a vocabulary of grief, and we suffer for it. The book of Lamentations accosts us by the wayside as a stranger who offers us an unasked-for, unwanted, and yet priceless gift — the poetry of pain. We would be wise to pay attention.
Lamentations, like the personified Lady Jerusalem within its pages, often sits alone within the landscape of the Christian Bible calling out to those readers who pass by to take notice but, as with Lady Jerusalem, there is no one to comfort. Lamentations is one of those Old Testament books that have never really attained a place of prominence in Christian spirituality and reflection. This means that when attempting to think theologically about the book one does not have the rich heritage of Christian theological interpretation to draw on that one finds with books such as Genesis, Exodus, Psalms, or Isaiah. Perhaps this is to be expected because Lamentations is only twice alluded to in the New Testament, while a book such as Isaiah seems omnipresent. So when one comes to read Lamentations theologically as a Christian, one has to start with a comparatively slender thread of prior reflection as a guide.
When we reflect theologically on Lamentations, issues of method require some comment. First of all, Lamentations was not written to present a theology. As Adele Berlin notes, "the book does not construct a theology of its own, nor does it present in any systematic way the standard theology of its time. It assumes the `theology of destruction' in which destruction and exile are punishment for sin." So one task of the theological reader is to bring to the surface the theology underlying the text and to seek to clarify its contours.
Second, Lamentations was not written by Christians, nor for Christians. The theology of Lamentations is not Christian theology. Nevertheless, Lamentations is part of the Jewish Scriptures accepted by the earliest churches as their own sacred Scripture. Jesus and his early followers saw their story as one of continuity with Israel's story recounted in those holy scrolls. Thus while Lamentations is not a Christian text, it was received by the early church as one of the books through which God continued to address his people, even if that people was now composed of both Jews and Gentiles united by faith in Jesus the Messiah.
But precisely how should Israel's sacred texts be interpreted by this new community of Jesus? In the same way that Israel had always reinterpreted its own texts — in the light of the current thing that God was doing. For the early Jewish followers of Jesus, God had moved to do something radical in the current situation. In Jesus' life, death, resurrection, and ascension the end of the age had come and a new age had broken in. Jesus was seen as the climax (though not the end) of God's dealings with Israel, and all of Israel's traditions and texts were reread in the light of Christ. Christians reading Israel's Scriptures cannot read those texts as if Jesus had not come. But, and it is an important "but," to allow those texts to challenge and contribute to ongoing Christian reflection there is a critical place for seeking to hear them on their own terms. In other words, part of a Christian theological reflection on Lamentations will require the Christian reader to listen for the text's distinctive, pre-Christian voice. The danger of considering Old Testament texts only in the light of Christ is that all one hears is what one already knows from the New Testament. But the Old Testament has much to teach Christians that they will not find in the New, often because the New took it for granted but then the later church forgot it. However, for the Christian, once one has heard the distinctive voice of Lamentations one has to bring that voice into dialogue with God's revelation in Christ to discern how God is addressing the church through it. This is an art, not a science. So our aim in the first part of the commentary is to hear the distinctive theological voice of Lamentations but, in the second part, it is to hear how the acoustics change when that voice is heard in the Cathedral of Christ.
It ought to be said clearly that there will never be such a thing as the Christian interpretation of Lamentations. This is because the meanings to which it gives birth are not so much "in the text" as born out of the interaction of the text and the (hopefully) Spirit-led activity of its readers. Christian readers will be mixing the genes of Lamentations with the genes of other biblical texts, Christian theological reflections through the ages, the experiences of various readers, and so on. The book is simply so pregnant with potential that the meanings to which it gives birth will be diverse even within the constraints imposed by canonical context, the Rule of Faith, and the history of Christian interpretation.
Authorship, Date, and Place of Composition
Issues of authorship, date, and place of composition have been prominent in many scholarly discussions, and I see no value in rehearsing them at any length here. Readers who want a good orientation on such matters will find the overviews in the commentaries of Claus Westermann and Paul House helpful.
The earliest tradition regarding the authorship of Lamentations to which we have access identifies the prophet Jeremiah as the writer, and that identification went more or less unchallenged until the eighteenth century. The Septuagint's Greek translation of the book opens with the words, "And it came to pass after Israel had gone into captivity, and Jerusalem was laid to waste, that Jeremiah sat weeping and composed this lament over Jerusalem and said...." The Syriac, Targum, and Vulgate have similar headings. In keeping with its identification of the author, the Septuagint places Lamentations immediately after the book of Jeremiah — a location it retains in Christian Bibles. While the Hebrew Bible traditions do not locate Lamentations next to Jeremiah, this was for liturgical reasons and not because they reflect a different tradition on authorship (see "The Canonical Locations of Lamentations" below).
The modern period, beginning with Hermann von der Haardt's commentary in 1712, has seen an almost total rejection of the once universal belief that Jeremiah wrote Lamentations. Many now see the author(s) as connected in some way with the royal court, prophetic circles, or more commonly, the temple.
Some modern authors have argued that while Jeremiah is not the author of the book, he may be one of the voices in it or perhaps even the implied author. This would allow us to see deliberate and conscious allusions to the book of Jeremiah in Lamentations while remaining agnostic about actual authorship. This commentary shares such agnosticism about the question of authorship. Indeed, while it inclines towards the view that Lamentations has a single author, it also admits that multiple authorship is a possibility with different poems penned at different times by different people. What it is uncompromising on is the insistence that the book of Lamentations as we have it, whatever its compositional prehistory, should be read as a single, unified book. Even if some of the poems (or parts of them) had different origins, they have been crafted into a new literary whole, and it is that which is the primary focus for interpretation. For instance, ch. 3, which is the most plausible candidate for different authorship, is very clearly shaped to fit its context in Lamentations, as the use of the acrostic pattern and the intertextual links with the rest of the book show. Consequently, it will be fundamental to the approach of this commentary that the parts of Lamentations are interpreted in the light of the whole. Almost no attention will be given over to attempting to date the separate chapters beyond locating them at some point during the exilic period.
Clearly, if Jeremiah was the author, then Lamentations would be a response to the cataclysmic events in Judah in 587 B.C. and its aftermath. It remains the case that, in spite of the modern rejection of Jeremiah as author, the vast majority of interpreters of Lamentations continue to see it as literature written during the period of exile in Babylon, some time between 587 and 538 B.C. The internal evidence of Lamentations fits very neatly into this historical context even if it does not unequivocally require it. That, combined with a very ancient and uncontested tradition linking Lamentations with the exile, makes a sixth-century B.C. date likely. Recent linguistic arguments have strengthened this conclusion. This commentary therefore assumes that Lamentations was written in Judah (on the grounds that the viewpoint in the book is Jerusalem-focused) by those who were left behind after the fall of Jerusalem and the exile of its key citizens.
The Exilic Context of Lamentations
The exile was the most cataclysmic event (or serial event) in the history of biblical Israel. The Babylonians besieged Jerusalem for three years until, in 587 or 586 B.C., the city wall was breached and the city taken. King Zedekiah fled and was captured. The temple was destroyed and sacked, as later were the palace and the great houses, and the leading citizens were taken off to Babylonian exile (in 597, 2 Kgs 24:14; and 587/586, 2 Kgs 25:11; and again in 582). The following (slightly modified) chart from Walter Kaiser Jr. draws some of the connections between Lamentations and the historic destruction of Jerusalem (although the following warnings about poetic language need to be kept in mind).
Scholars disagree about much of the historical reconstruction of the event including how many people were deported. Some argue that the archaeological evidence supports a very severe destruction and deportation: "Judah was almost entirely destroyed and ... its Jewish population disappeared from most of the kingdom's territory." Others maintain that only a minority of the population was deported and that the vision of almost total deportation given in Kings and Chronicles is a theological assessment and very misleading if taken as a strictly historical one. Even if that were the case, we must not imagine that the exile was not really that bad. There is no doubt that Jerusalem and the surrounding cities were treated extremely harshly.
On top of this, it needs to be appreciated that the poetry of Lamentations, while it may not always reflect clear and accurate historical information, reflects the "emotional, social, and ... spiritual impact of the disaster." And this trauma was induced as much by the social and theological import of the situation as by the physical pain. This crisis cut right to the heart of Israel's covenant relationship with her God. The impregnable city of God, the joy of the whole earth, had been turned to ruins; the temple, the very dwelling place of YHWH on earth, had been desecrated and destroyed; the king, descended from the Davidic line appointed by God to rule over Israel "forever" (2 Sam 7:14-16), was captured and deported; the people who had been given the promised land as an inheritance had been vomited out of it into Babylon. The theological world of the Israelites was torn asunder leaving questions about the possibility of their ongoing relationship with God. The crisis was so traumatic because it was experienced as a total abandonment by YHWH.
Lamentations is to be understood, in the first instance, against this historical and theological background but we need to appreciate that the text makes very few direct references to specific historical persons, dates, and incidents. Even Babylon, the archenemy of the exilic period, is not mentioned by name. Instead the language is poetic, and using it to reconstruct history is a precarious business. As Delbert Hillers notes, the history in Lamentations is "experienced and narrated in conformity to certain pre-existing literary and religious patterns." It is this that has enabled it so easily to transcend its original horizons.
The majority of scholars suggest that the poems of Lamentations were written for liturgical use in public rituals of lament. There was a tradition in the cultures of the ancient Near East of the use of city laments in public rituals, and while Lamentations has many differences from these city laments the connections are suggestive. There is also some evidence in the Old Testament of public laments over Jerusalem (Jer 41:4-5; Isa 61:3; Zech 7:2-7; 8:19). The internal evidence of the book suggests that it was written to call YHWH's attention to the plight of the people so he might act to save them, and this would fit with the idea that the book was used in public ceremonies during the exile. However, we have no direct evidence that Lamentations was used in this way, and all that we can do is speculate. What we do know is that in later rabbinic times it was being used in public laments on the 9th of Ab (the fifth month) for the destruction of Herod's temple and for other national disasters.
The Ancient Near Eastern Context of Lamentations
Scholars have long noted similarities and differences between Lamentations and the five extant ancient Sumerian/Babylonian laments over the destruction of cities. The older city laments are usually considered to be compositions to be used in rituals during which the foundations of old sanctuaries were razed prior to the construction of new sanctuaries. The suggestion is that the laments were offered to the deity of the sanctuary to appease his wrath at its destruction. Some have argued that Lamentations stands in the same literary tradition as these older ancient Near Eastern city laments and is directly dependent on them. It is indeed possible that Babylonian city laments were encountered by Jews in the exilic period. F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp proposes that, while there is a direct dependence of Lamentations on the city lament traditions, "Lamentations is no simple Mesopotamian city lament. Rather, it represents a thorough translation and adaptation of the genre in a Judean environment and is ultimately put to a significantly different use." Others argue that direct dependence is not demonstrable and indeed unlikely. Thomas McDaniel maintained that the similarities between Lamentations and other ancient Near Eastern city laments reflect a common experience and not a common literary tradition. A mediating position has been taken by other scholars who propose that, while direct literary dependence is unlikely (i.e., the author[s] of Lamentations were not aping specific ancient Near Eastern city laments, and may not even have read them), an indirect dependence is possible mediated via a common culture.
Lamentations shares much in common with the Sumerian laments and also has many differences. There is still no unanimity on how best to assess the significance of those similarities and differences. It seems wisest to bear in mind this wider nonbiblical tradition of lament when reading Lamentations but not to make it determinative for interpretation. Whatever the precise relationship between Lamentations and older, non-Israelite city laments, we can see that the experience of loss reflected in the former is not utterly unique but participates in a more general human experience of suffering. This is not to suggest that the suffering reflected in Lamentations lacks particularity and uniqueness. Nevertheless, while the suffering of Judah has unique dimensions, it is not utterly unlike the suffering of wider humanity. Those in Judah, for instance, were hardly the first or the last people in the ancient world to experience the horrors of siege warfare. This point will be of theological significance later in the commentary.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Lamentationsby Robin Parry Copyright © 2010 by Robin Parry. Excerpted by permission of William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Product details
- Publisher : Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. (September 3, 2010)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 272 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0802827144
- ISBN-13 : 978-0802827142
- Item Weight : 13.3 ounces
- Dimensions : 6.14 x 0.69 x 9.21 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #2,025,068 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #913 in Christian Prophets (Books)
- #2,272 in Old Testament Criticism & Interpretation
- #4,114 in Old Testament Commentaries
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read book recommendations and more.
Customer reviews
- 5 star4 star3 star2 star1 star5 star68%0%0%8%24%68%
- 5 star4 star3 star2 star1 star4 star68%0%0%8%24%0%
- 5 star4 star3 star2 star1 star3 star68%0%0%8%24%0%
- 5 star4 star3 star2 star1 star2 star68%0%0%8%24%8%
- 5 star4 star3 star2 star1 star1 star68%0%0%8%24%24%
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonTop reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
- Reviewed in the United States on April 6, 2014Easy to read and understand. Lots of information. I can't wait until they publish more books in this series. :)
- Reviewed in the United States on October 28, 2013This book was a revelation, Absolutely wonderful. I highly recommend it Even if you are not a student of lamentations.
- Reviewed in the United States on January 18, 2016Just wanted everyone to know that this commentary is written by Parry, who is a universalist, meaning that he believes that everyone will go to heaven, and no one will go to hell. This is inconsistent with what the bible is clear on and is enough to make me not want to read the commentary. This idea is especially important when discussing the idea of suffering which is so prevalent in Lamentations. I found out of his theology after I had already bought the book. There are some allusions to his universalism in the commentary.