In some ways, Lamentations 5 does not fit the rest of the book – and yet, in other ways it fits perfectly!
It is not an acrostic poem. Each of the first four chapters consist of 22 stanzas – each beginning with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet. And chapter 3 went beyond that – each stanza there contained three verses that all started with the same letter!
So Lamentations does not fit – it is not an acrostic. Yet, there are 22 verses!
Chapters 1, 2, and 4 all begin with the same word – a word often found at the beginning of a lament. And chapter 3 is so obviously a lament that it didn’t need that word!
But chapter 5 is not a lament. Also, there is no third person reference to God here – there is nothing about how he has done all these things to me or us. Chapter 5 is a prayer. It is all in the second person - addressing God directly.
And yet, it is all the same material that we have seen in the first four chapters.
Gone is the first person voice of the poet. “I” have nothing left to say. Lady Zion – dear sweet Jerusalem – is silent here.
Silent – but not absent. She is very present in this poem – in this prayer.
In the book of Judges, the literary structure of the book disintegrates as the people of God disintegrate. Even so, here in Lamentations, the tightly structured poetry dissipates.
The book of Judges had warned the people of God – Do not trust a king from Gibeah. Rather, look for a king from Bethlehem.
But now the king from Bethlehem has failed! What shall become of God’s promises?
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