Lamentations
Audrey Connor
Vanderbilt Divinity School
Nashville, Tennessee, USA
I led an adult Sunday school
class in my denomination of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) on
Lamentations in preparation for this paper.
This class was in a small, white suburban church outside Nashville, Tennessee and we examined
the book with special concentration on chapter three. After giving the lay-people of the church
historical context of the book, I began reading half of chapter three. I
immediately felt unsure of my task. Was
this book of the Bible too much for this congregation to understand? What if there was a woman in this group who
had recent wounds of a brutal marriage, or worse, a woman in the room was
involved in a relationship of domestic violence? Would they look at me like another liberal
Vanderbilt Divinity student who was more interested in thinking than
praying? Immediately after the reading,
the group was silent. I asked what they
gathered the image of God to be, and finally someone spoke, “Really awful”.
The Reader’s Context
I read the book of
Lamentations from the belly of an empire in a time of war while additional
political tensions arise due to an upcoming presidential election. Also, I come to the text as an Anglo-American
who was reared in different cities in the northern state of Ohio. While I was nurtured with an open-mindedness
and love for all people as a daughter of a Disciples of Christ minister, I grew
without the benefit of significant racial or ethnic diversity in my neighborhood,
church, or school. In addition, I am a
candidate for ordination in the mainline denomination of the Christian Church
(Disciples of Christ) while in the master of divinity program in a Protestant
divinity school in the Bible belt in Nashville, Tennessee. This American-born denomination is a
non-creedal church which began in the late nineteenth-century, and it affirms
the following two main ideas: “Jesus Christ is the son of the Living God, and
offers saving grace to all”, and “All persons are God’s children.” Amid what some sociologists label
secularization in the USA, these
congregations have autonomy and practice various methods of biblical
interpretation and lay leadership.
However, most Disciples churches focus on the unity of the church, the
priesthood of all believers, a Communion table open to all, and freedom to
believe as one’s conscience dictates. (See http://www.disciples.org/discover/beliefs.htm accessed March 28, 2004.)
The Sunday school
class with which I read Lamentations was composed of about eight participants
ranging in age from twenty-six to sixty.
Each person was given a chance to share where they were when John F.
Kennedy was shot or when the Twin Towers fell.
Then, I gave historical background to the writings of Lamentations that
is given in this paper. In order to
stress the importance of national lamenting that the Hebrews shared in
Lamentations, I asked the church members to list national laments experienced
in America. After this, we read the first seventeen
verses together. Each participant had
trouble picturing the God described by the first half of chapter three because
God seemed so cruel, especially considering that God
as the same they worshipped. After a
difficult conversation, I asked a participant to read the subsequent verses in
chapter three. I asked again, who do you
see God to be after reading this scripture?
Once more, there was a pause. The
participants discussed the difficulty in worshiping a God that is so fierce who
demanded absolute love. It was then that
a member of the Sunday school class offered that her trip to Haiti taught her about
a people who had so little and yet they seemed to have more love of God than
anyone she knew in the United States.
The United States is a
pleasure-seeking, consumer culture. A
recent popular magazine entitled our country the “Prozac Nation” in order to
portray the increasing dependence on chemical substances to improve the quality
of life. To be sure, distractions to
pain plague American existence with increasing access to the World Wide Web,
televisions, cell phones, video games, movies, and literature which urge people
to forget about life’s difficulties and consume. Indeed, the first lady declared that
television is what is ruining the minds of youth in the United States. This ethos of inability to confront pain illuminate possible
factors which contribute to the neglect and the need for Lamentations in
churches.
More to the point, I write from a context in
which national lamentations arise more from particular experience in the
nation, rather than a universal disenfranchisement for all Americans. There are great systemic injustices operating
in the context of the United States including racism,
gender inequity, homophobia, and a great disparity in wealth. We are a nation which professes limitless
opportunity for all with a dynasty of power of old money and big business
controlling the government and regulating the economy. The land of the free and
the brave is only free to those who are given opportunities to learn, to earn,
and to live. The adult Sunday school
mentioned previously were asked what national lamentations they would identify
for Americans. They offered the following: the Vietnam war,
the holocaust of many Native American nations, September 11, 2001, the assassination of President John F.
Kennedy, slavery, the Columbine shootings of high school teenagers, oppression
of refugees, and the hate-crime of Matthew Shephard,
a gay teenager. Each tragedy touches on
the destruction of qualities of life as the nation grieves: of daily safety, of
loss of loved ones, of a loss of cultural expression and freedoms, of a feeling
of national insecurity, and of the understanding of their complicity. However, none of these calamities created an
utter annihilation of the cities, religion, and homes of all American citizens. Thus,
the national lamentations cried out by Americans can border on the absurd in
comparison to the lamentations of the early Jews after the destruction of the Temple and the
Babylonian exile.
This conclusion may
sound extremely insensitive in light of the destruction of cultures of
African-Americans, Native Americans, and the gay and lesbian population, to
name a few. But, I am differentiating
between lamentations against the government and lamentations because of the
fall of the government. While omitting
the gross injustices within the United States is dangerous, I
would be remiss to neglect the fact that the United States parallels Babylon in strength and
power more than Jerusalem.
Theological and
Contextual Issues
The imagery of Lamentations furthers the
negative imagery of women. Kathleen M.
O’Connor notes that daughter Zion is able to use
her voice; however, calamity is said to be daughter Zion’s fault. Indeed, the imagery of women is designed to
portray negative aspects of Jerusalem. O’Connor summarizes,
daughter Zion’s prayer may
help contemporary women in their prayer.
Daughter Zion’s voice evokes
the pain of women who have lost their children, who knew sexual abuse, who are
victims of war and famine. To pray with
daughter Zion is to join the
struggles of women around the globe. It
is to reject victimhood by embracing anger that can
provide energy to transform relationships. (Kathleen
O’Connor, “Lamentations.” in Women’s Bible Commentary)
In the context of an American culture with Evangelicals that believe in
the sacredness of the Hebrew Bible, the violence against women in Lamentations
must be addressed. Women lose their
babies, their homes, and their safety of life because of partner abuse in America. Lamentations
also contains violence against women.
Violence against women
is no new phenomenon. In fact, the metaphor of Judah as a whore is no
new occurrence. One cannot open the Bible without seeing a book written by men
for the ideological interest of men. In Battered
Love, Renita Weems
writes about the damage of the prophets’ use of the marriage metaphor of Zion to Yahweh, which
is also used in Lamentations. She posits
that when the metaphor succeeds, “meaning that the reader becomes so engrossed
in the pathos and the details of the metaphor,” then “the dissimilarities between the two are disregarded” (Weems, Battered…,
112). Thus, the metaphor of daughter Zion abused by her
husband condones marital abuse by perpetuating the normative of partner
abuse. For Christians, the New Testament
continues this foreboding idea with a tradition that stigmatizes the body,
limits women’s role in church, and offsets power in marital relationships
So why read the text
if it contains bad messages for women? The
simple answer is that the text is there and the community must discern how
to read it. Deryn Guest offers that the scriptural authority does not
come from the text; she writes “[r]ather, the text
is invested with an authority, and this investiture comes from the readers
themselves” (Guest, “Hiding Behind…”, 437). I further add that the text’s divinity comes
not from the words themselves, but from the struggle of the community with
the text. It is through this struggle
that we can hear the voice of God.
Most Americans of the
twenty-first century experienced massive destruction firsthand after the
bombing of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. This catastrophe annihilated the Twin Towers from the New York skyline and
murdered over two thousand people during peacetime in America. In a photography exhibit opening of the
commemoration of the sad event, Secretary of State Colin Powell remarked,
“September 11th was a very personal experience for each of us. Each of us remembers where we were when we
first learned of the attacks. Each of us
remembers our initial chilling impressions and our response.” The nation grieved this horrible incident
together as so many lives were lost, national security was gone, and people
were afraid. Charlotte Beers from the
Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs said, “Since the tragic events of September
11th, Americans of all ages and backgrounds have come to realize
that we are bound together in a national consciousness.” Currently, there remains
many questions left unanswered by the bombing.
Did America bring this
attack on itself? Did President Bush
know about the bombing? Was the bombing
caused by sin as some of the Christian leaders declared early on? In Lamentations,
one also sees great devastation in a city.
And it is God who has created this destruction. God is punishing the sins of the people,
while other nations watch without helping.
Though the response of the place of God differs
between the Hebrews and Americans, both contexts struggle with the same aspect
of guilt.
Finally, the suffering
one encounters in Lamentations includes suffering that
is incomprehensible to most Americans.
For instance, chapter three contains an image of a lion waiting to attack
to shred people to pieces, mothers eating their babies, and national
homelessness and humiliation. I must be
clear that this hunger does affect many Americans, especially in economically
impoverished areas such as struggling inner cities and poor rural areas. However, I am viewing this from the context
of an economically strong government. To
be sure, one could hear a much different reading of the text if heard only
through the lens of a particular community in the United States. Thus, the overarching image of such a
horrific context is difficult for any American to fathom. Most Americans cannot relate to the hunger
described in Lamentations, a foreign army invading the city by ransacking one’s
religious temples, mosques, or churches, and taking away all people’s jobs. The poets
describe the utter poverty and hunger as a result of the Babylonian invasion
and the gross horror of watching a people become “slaves” to the “slaves”.
Thus, when the writer theologizes that God would do such awful attacks on humans, the reader is left contemplating a very alien text
describing a very alien God.
Nonetheless, the
grievous experience pictured in Lamentations is not alien to all people. Many live with the threat of invading
governments at any moment. In the 1980’s, Nicaraguans experienced foreign invasion through the
US-backed guerilla warfare by the Contras almost daily. In war-torn countries such as Afghanistan, Israel, and Bosnia, citizens are
under constant threat of attack from different enemies. Furthermore, homelessness and hunger are a
daily fact for billions around the world.
Most Americans cannot relate to the text because they have not seen the
images described by the book. Thus, this
biblical book is a helpful tool to understand both the life context and the
faith lives of people from impoverished nations. Lamentations is a helpful book
as it calls people toward a greater understanding outside the American context.
As a result, theological issues for the people of God in the United States include a need
to understand violence against women, September 11th, and an
awareness of the destitution around the world.
Context of the Global Biblical Commentary
Archie Chi Chung Lee writes
about Lamentations from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. In this context, the
Christian community has a rich history of ancient literature outside the
Christian canon. Lee believes that part
of the context that informs the understanding of the text must be ancient
Chinese literature. He asserts, “we cannot overlook the fact that other texts contributed and
continue to contribute to the formation of the canon and to enrich its
interpretation.” See Archie Chi
Chung Lee. “Lamentations” in the Global
Biblical Commentary, ed. Daniel M. Patte, Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt Press,
2004.) The people of Hong Kong have recently
come out from under colonization, and suffer from in neo-colonialism. There have been many “humiliating defeats at
war, loss of geographical integrity and deprivation of human dignity as well as
forced surrender of independence in the face of western imperialism.” Lee believes that “calamities are clouded
and loaded with socio-political complexities.”
Lee writes particularly from the context of mothers who lost their
children at Tiananmen Square with more than
160 families losing loved ones and ancient Chinese literature. Thus, he takes seriously the worlds of both
the Chinese suffering at Tiananmen Square and the biblical
and ancient Chinese texts in order to understand it.
Overview of Lamentations
The early church attributed
Lamentations to Jeremiah, the “weeping prophet”. However, this does not appear to be true upon
close examination. The prophecies of
Jeremiah often do not echo the sentiments of the laments,
and Jeremiah never mentions himself by name throughout the book. It is more probable that there are multiple
authors of Lamentations as the different chapters offer changing voices and
styles of laments.
Though scholars are not certain where it was written exactly, most attribute
the context of Lamentations to be immediately after the fall of Jerusalem and the
beginning of the Babylonian exile. One
commentary reports, “By severing the book from precise historical connections,
the interpreter quickly enables the book to serve as a metaphor that may
illuminate many different situations of intense pain and suffering”.
The overall structure of Lamentations is a
series of five poems. While only the
first four are alphabet acrostics, the last chapter has 22 verses for the 22
Hebrew letters. Thus, many argue that it
is also an acrostic. The middle chapter
is the longest with three verses for each Hebrew letter, making 66 verses. This
neat ordering of the text may have been used as a remembering device for the
orator to use. Some argue that order
denotes an effort to attach logic and reason to the incomprehensible,
irrational pain expressed therein.
It is read today within Judaism on the ninth of Av to commemorate the five
calamities including the Babylonian invasion and the destruction of the
temple. For Christians, a portion of
Lamentations is read during Holy Week to remember Christ’s death. Lamentations is a national lamentation for
the nation like a dirge for a funeral.
Frank S. Frick delineates the difference between a lamentation and a
lament as the following: “A lamentation or dirge is suitable in a situation
that cannot be changed (the death of someone or the destruction of a
city). A lament presupposes that a
situation of distress can be changed if and when Yahweh intervenes”. Thus, within a context of a nation that
fights foreign invasion, it could be argued that a lament would be more
appropriate for the U.S., rather than a
lamentation.
The center of Lamentations is contested among
scholars. In the first two chapters (the
twin chapters), the reader hears a female voice as Zion is depicted as
“a widow and mother lamenting her suffering and perishing children”. These chapters convey an excruciating pain
with no ease from the Deity. Then,
chapter three begins with the statement, “I am the man.” This is often characterized as
“everyman”. Through this chapter, one
sees that the female Zion has sinned and
God is punishing her, but through faithfulness to God, people will be
redeemed. I follow Tod
Linafelt’s argument to de-center this chapter in
light of scholarship which has ignored the female voice and the theological
dilemma of suffering that is plainly expressed by the twin chapters and
chapters four and five. By losing this
voice, scholarship has lost a voice of protest against injustice, pain, and
suffering in place of a Christian message of redemption. I will de-center chapter three by examining
the text holistically. To examine it
holistically, I will read the text thematically. This essay
explore the themes of gender equity and theodicy. Each of the five poems contributes to the
overall picture of Lamentations. Instead of looking at the pericopes in isolation, I themes which
are present in the whole of the book.
In addition, it is important
to understand the lens from which I read Lamentations. I use a
liberation hermeneutic. I believe
God can be heard through the tension of multiple voices within a community
which reads the text. Though I am only
one person, I interpret from a community of mainline Protestants. I also read in the shadows of great
theological influences such as Carter Heyward, J. Deotis
Roberts, and Dorothy Solle. Finally, it is important to understand that
Lamentations expresses a pain about a moment of mourning that has been forever
trapped on the pages. Though the first poets to have expressed emotion have
presumably moved toward different understandings as time went on, the words of
Lamentations have not. Rather than follow Lamentations through verses in order
to gauge an “American” perspective upon every pericope, I look at Lamentations
holistically with the examination of gender inequities, the affects of September 11, 2001, and the
difficulty Americans have to seeing great suffering.
Lamentations and
Women
In order to hear clearly how Lamentations can
affect female readers negatively, I will examine work by Deryn
Guest. (See Deryn Guest. “Hiding Behind the Naked Women in
Lamentations: A Recriminative Response,” in Biblical Interpretation 7, pp. 413-447.)
Guest
elucidates the ramifications of female imagery with the plight of the Hebrews
described in Lamentations. Through
Guest’s positive, feminist reading, Guest destabilizes “the ideological agenda
inherent in the text’s format which encourage[s] the reader to make certain
judgments and read in a certain manner”.
Guest highlights the attributes of daughter Zion in order to
re-member her. She is described as an
isolated woman weeping alone into the night, and a widow who mourns her
children (Lam 1.1). In addition,
daughter Zion is displayed
publicly. Guest writes, “denuded of her previously glorious status she is now reduced
to naked humiliating exposure” (Lam 1.8-9; 2.1). Finally, daughter Zion is raped. She is ignored, suffers physical and mental
abuse, she is betrayed, she is bereaved, and she “articulates her own sense of
guilt”.
Guest posits,
This remembering of
Zion/Woman has enabled us to grasp the all-encompassing nature of her
fate. Physically battered, violated,
exposed publicly, derided, isolated and ignored, betrayed by lovers, friends
and left ‘widowed’ by her guardian deity, bereaved of children, she suffers all
with an ongoing misery that knows no respite.
Truly Lamentations is another ‘text of terror’, exacerbated by the fact
that the deity is not merely absent on this occasion, but actively involved in
the punishment. (Deryn Guest. “Hiding Behind the
Naked Women in Lamentations: A Recriminative
Response,” in Biblical Interpretation 7 p. 420.)
Guest further argues that western
interpretation of Lamentations neglected the appropriate attention to the
negative imagery of women for many reasons including the idea that one should
not challenge a text. Also, Guest notes
that the “personification of the city as a battered woman has been praised as a
very useful device whereby a nation may be encouraged to acknowledge their
guilt and also their repentance”. The dilemma in this argument is that this
reasoning “neglects the effects it may have upon female readers”. For too many, the messages one receives from
the biblical text is mediated through male-centered hands who do not receive
the direct message of abuse as women do and are not directly challenged by the
texts.
Guest’s analysis
indicates many ways that the uncontested use of the daughter Zion metaphor
sustains oppressive cycles to women.
Guest summarily asserts that the damaging metaphor “works its agenda
into the minds of its readers, sustaining its encoded messages:”
Sustaining the view that
woman are inherently susceptible to dangerous flirtations, wanton rebellious,
thoughtless, weak.
Sustaining the view that
woman can be reduced to objects that can be violently acted upon, without
repercussion, in order to control their wilder tendencies.
Sustaining the justice of violently abusing women as
punishment. If the deity can act in this
way to uphold his honour, integrity and reputation
against his city-wife, so the male head of the household is sanctioned to take
similar actions to uphold his reputation….
Sustaining the
neglect of women’s objections. A
woman can name her oppressor, plead
her plight, cry for help, but she is notably refused any acknowledgment, or
comfort, or redress within the text of Lamentations.
Sustaining the
male stereotyping of women into virginal/whore categories. Zion is on one hand
the virgin daughter, but in her menstrual, naked and abused state she is a
harlot.
Sustaining male
power, privilege and the ‘norms’ of the patriarchal world view, including men’s
rights over women’s sexuality.
Sustaining an exalted
understanding of male pride, where male deity cannot be cuckolded without
severe repercussions undertaken to restore his honour.
Sustaining divine
sanction for the abuse of women.
As a result, Guest offers
that one must search for the voice of the “other” in order to compete with the
male voice. Guest believes that it is
through such resistance of the text, that women can own her own pain. Thus, one must struggle with the text in
order to be free from the constraints of the text. Guest appreciates dimensions of the marriage
metaphor as it instructs humanity of its important active participation with
God. Indeed, there is a message of the
importance of reconciliation with God and others through “forgiveness, mercy,
tolerance and grace at the forefront of future human associations”. Finally, Guest reveals an important insight
that it is the Jewish poet who rapes and punishes the widow, not God.
In reading the text with the
Sunday school class from Belleview Christian Church, the women did not pick up
on the abusive connotations of imagery.
Yet there was an unarticulated resistance to the relationship that God
had with God’s people. This relationship
was understood in the context of another culture, but the class did not name
this relationship as domestic violence.
While Guest reveals the importance of struggling with the text in order
to free it from the dominating and oppressive male voice, the Sunday school
class reveals the importance of wrestling with a closed-reading of the text in
order to find redeeming value in the words.
In other words, the Sunday school class expressed gut reactions against
the Divine-human relationships which undercut the theology of a Divine-Human
marriage. However, by imagining how the
“other” would read the text, the class also understood the redeeming value of
the message of Lamentation.
Lamentations and September
11, 2001
What does Lamentations
say to people who have suffered under the attacks on September 11th, 2001? While traveling in South Africa, I met Muslims
at an inter-faith dialogue meeting. When
asked about how the Muslim community responded to the attacks, the gracious
Muslim leaders reported that Americans must understand that many around the
world did not believe the extent of the atrocity reported. They told us that there were never images of
people actually killed on the street conveyed to them. These statements concerned and surprised me
as I recounted the gross images, articles, and reports the media inundated
Americans with after the attacks. My own experience of that day with so many people crying, scared,
and preparing themselves for the worst.
I called my friend who lived a block away from the Pentagon, and he
walked over to see the effects of the attack on the Pentagon and the multitude
of people outside mourning. I also remembered my friend’s report who was living in New York City during that time
and had to walk out of the city amid ashes, body parts, and the horror of not
understanding what was happening with millions because the transportation
system was down. How could the world not
hear the laments of that tragic day?
On reading Lamentations, the cries of the
Hebrew people echoes through that American tragedy. In the first two chapters, one sees a nation
abandoned by other countries (Lam 1.2; 1.12; 1.19). The terrorist attack on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center exposed the
difficulty of finding world support against an agency outside national
support. To most Americans, the attack
was unexpected, unwarranted, and evil.
Americans felt abandoned by the world as its way of life was isolated as
destructible. For the Hebrews, their
sanctuary was invaded (1.10). In one
sense, New York City is the most
“American” and secure cities. It is a symbol of freedom, hope, and new life
as it is the home of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. To many, it, too, was a like a sanctuary that
the enemy was able to penetrate. Then,
Lamentations 1.13 cites a fire which has left the writer faint all day long. Everyone on the streets have
died (2.11-2) and both elders and daughters mourn together (2.10). This picture was one experienced by so many
who watched loved ones perish who were in airplanes, buildings, or on the
streets of New York City. Then, the writer of chapter three describes
to the reader the tension created as God created bitterness in the people
(3.15). This bitterness could be seen
first in the bitterness for the Al Qaida, and later
the growing bitterness within the nation as it has become increasingly
polarized since the attack.
Finally, the search for a place of God in the
attacks connects the rhetoric of Lamentations to September 11th. Though Evangelical leader Jerry Falwell recanted his statement later, Falwell
reported soon after 9/11 that it was a sign from God of the evil that Americans
have brought on themselves for the tolerance such things as homosexuality. Other Americans blame the evil U.S. foreign policy
for the terrorist attacks. Most
recently, the Bush administration itself has been the blamed for the
attacks. The poet in
chapter one expresses, “The Lord is in the right for I have rebelled against
his word” (1.18). This search for
God’s place in the attacks also occurred in America, though the
administration argued God was on America’s side and not the
“terrorists”. In chapter three, the poet
states, “When all the prisoners of the land are crushed under foot, when human
rights are perverted in the presence of the Most high, when one’s case is
subverted – does the Lord not see it?” (3.34-6). President Bush echoed the
sentiments in his religious rhetoric in order to incite the nation in a way
against these “evildoers”.
Since the ancient times, people tried to
explain occurrences outside their control through an outside agent. Through the enlightenment, skepticism grows
and continues to grow. Yet the egregious
act on September 11th demonstrated the still-present tendency to
explain the inexplicable through a divine entity. In both contexts, God is someone with whom
blame is sought. In Babylonia, it is through
the hands of the enemy that God’s fierce anger is asserted and blame resides in
the Hebrew people. However, this does
not mean the enemy has divinity. Instead, the enemy is a passive object in
which God moves.
The Hebrew Bible articulates the story of a
people and their relationship with God.
For these people, Lamentations suggests that God is responsible for the
terrible act due to the sins of the Hebrew people. On the one hand, this is bad theology. It sets up theologians an
opportunity to chastise groups such as Falwell did with
the gay and lesbian population. On the
other hand, this theology articulates a true need for people to find
understanding for evil in the world.
With discernment, this theology can be helpful. Where is God in such evil? Lamentations exposes the Hebrews’ struggle to
discern the presence of evil in the world.
For the writer of Lamentations, God acted through the Babylonians in
order to punish the Israelites. As the
Sunday school class read the book in 2004, they struggled with where God was in
the annihilation of the Twin Towers. Was God working through Al Qaida? Was God
working through the United States at war? Was God working against US foreign
policy? These questions are valid, and
must be addressed. In our short time together, we could not answer them. Instead, we simply acknowledged their
importance and the caution needed in answering them.
Ergo, Lamentations helps to paint the
sufferings mourned by so many Americans.
There was a great cry of pain on September 11th as the nation
mourned thousands of gruesome, unjust deaths during a time of relative peace
and calm on American soil.
Lamentations and Theodicy
Still, if one looks at the tragedy described
in this book more closely, there are also descriptions that defy even September
11th. In chapter four, the
poet proclaims, “We were watching eagerly for a nation that could not save”
(Lam 4:17). It depicts an image
familiar to victims of September 11th of people wandering through
the streets with blood (4.14), but it also describes the fate of the people who
have become exiles (4.15). There is an
absolute destruction which is communicated for all Hebrew people (2.5).
Frick relates that because it was only the elite Hebrew people who were
exiled, the peasant class may not have been affected so violently. However,
because the Hebrew Bible is the product of the literary elite, we cannot know
what happened with this class. While this examination of Lamentations
acknowledges this ideology within the text, the text nevertheless communicates
to adherents the absolute destruction of an entire nation. The poverty described in each chapter is
chilling. There are accounts of women
eating babies and people starving on the streets (1.11;4.1-5,10,12). And there is a complete change in government
as the “natives” become the indentured servants to the invaders (5.5;
5.8). The poet writes, “we must pay for the water we drink; the wood we get must be
bought” (5.4). Finally, chapter three’s
description of the enemy (God) being a bear lying in wait and a lion hiding in
order to tear the Hebrew people to pieces (3.10-2) is an image that is hard for
Americans to grasp. The entire culture
and religion of the Hebrew people was demolished. The September 11th attacks were
truly an offense against the sanctuary of the country economically, but not
against America’s cultic
practices. Indeed, it was already stated
how some American evangelical religions used their voice as a reaction against
the attacks while in Lamentations, there are accounts of priest and prophets
killed in the sanctuary (2.20).
Both tragedies speak of gross suffering
caused systematically. However, through examining the text more closely, one
can see the differences in the systemic causes of the tragedy. Lamentations is written about a nation that
was completely destroyed, while America’s suffering
allow many American to continue to live well as citizens. The adult Sunday school class was only able
to relate to the suffering in Lamentation when the participants of the class
who had traveled to third world countries offered their perspective of their
experiences. As one member recounted her
experience in Haiti just before the
2004 coup, another relayed the living conditions of those in Nicaragua, and I recounted
life in racially stratified Namibia, an awareness was raised about the world. Through Lamentations, the voice of protest
against the suffering in the world was communicated in a very real way to these
Christian Americans as they saw they were connected to the pain through the
story.
We spent the end of the class-time discussing
many different places in the world for which the imagery of Lamentations was
most pertinent. For instance, places in Latin America where citizens
fear the government, wonder when they will eat next, and feel hopeless. The discussion brought an awareness of the
voices missing in the room and in the lives of the participants. It helped them understand the need to mourn
communally for our brothers and sisters around the world. And it was my belief was that through this
connection with others, one can move forward in challenging the oppressive
structures which create the suffering.
Different Contexts for Reading Lamentations
When comparing this North American
reading with Lee’s study from Hong Kong, fundamental differences
in the interpretations lie in the hermeneutic from which I read, the place of
Yahweh in the suffering, and the particular community from which I read the
book.
Concluding Remarks
This investigation of
Lamentations from both the United States and Lee’s Asian
perspective demonstrates the multifarious aspects with which one can read a
text and the different conclusions from the text. While Lee stressed importance of reading the
text in equal status of ancient, sacred Chinese literature, I expressed the
need for people to read the text with as many voices added to the conversation
in order to understand the historical context from which the text is
written. In addition, the multitudinous
voices of the writers and the heard by the readers
helps one understand better the sacred scripture.
In this study, one can
see the potential harm of this book of the Bible for women, a nation at war,
and first world readers isolated from national calamity. After discussing this book of the Hebrew
Bible with the Nashville adults, our only
conclusion was that there was a time and a place for the healing of
Lamentations. This healing that took
place included the constant struggle to discern God’s presence in the face of
great evil in the suffering of women in the US, the hardships
of people around the world, and the destruction Americans face during a time of
war. As a Disciples of
Christ congregation, the theology of who God is and what humanity must do in
response changes. But through
listening to the struggle and the scriptures together, we can discern the
questions and begin to hear God’s presence in our struggles.
Works Cited
After September 11: Images
from Ground Zero. An exhibition by the US Department of State,
Bureau
of Educational and Cultural Affairs with Photographs by Joel Meyerowitz.
Blair, Edward P. Abingdon Bible
Handbook. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press,
1975.
Frick, Frank S. A Journey through the Hebrew Scriptures. Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1995.
Guest, Deryn.
“Hiding Behind the Naked Women in Lamentations: A Recriminative
Response,”
in Biblical Interpretation 7 O pp. 413-447.
Lee, Archie Chi Chung. “Lamentations” in the Global Biblical Commentary, ed. Daniel M. Patte,
Nashville, TN:
Vanderbilt Press, 2004.
Linafelt, Tod.
Surviving
Lamentations. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2000.
Meeks, Wayne A., gen. ed. The Harper Collins Study Bible.
NY: HarperCollins, 1993.
O’Connor, Kathleen,
“Lamentations” in Women’s
Bible Commentary: Expanded Edition, eds.
Carol A. Newsom and Sharon
H. Ringe. Knox Press: Louisville, KY, 1998.
-----. “Lamentations,” in The New Interpreters’ Bible: A Commentary in
twelve volumes.
Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press,
2001. pp. 1011-1072.
Weems, Renita
Battered Love. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress, 1995.
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