An Atheist Explores the Bible Part 159: Not the book to go to for a lot of laughs (Lamentations 1-5)

Lamentations 1-5
Not the book to go to for a lot of laughs.

Welcome to another instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Bible version).

In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the King James Bible, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology.

For more detail, see the introductory post http://bit.ly/2F8f9JT

For the online KJV I use, see here http://bit.ly/2m0zVUP

And now:

Lamentations 1

 “How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! how is she become as a widow! she that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary!”

Well, it does what it says on the tin. This is a lamentation for the desolated Jerusalem, told in poetic form, with Jerusalem cast as a woman mourning her “children”, and how none of “her lovers” came to save her from ruin. I know I complained at the end of Jeremiah about the never-ending sorrows and woe of that book, but the poetry in this one is such that it reads a whole lot better, even if the subject matter is just as despairing.

There’s not a lot to say on this chapter, to be honest, it bears reading itself for the language. Only this bears comment;“Jerusalem is as a menstruous woman among them”. Hmm. If I remember my Leviticus and/or Deuteronomy correctly, this means “she” is considered unclean and to be shunned. Charming superstition.

Lamentations 2

“How hath the Lord covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger, and cast down from heaven unto the earth the beauty of Israel, and remembered not his footstool in the day of his anger!”

I didn’t really discuss the topic of the previous chapter, which was that Jerusalem was reduced to the metaphorical status of a beggar-woman due tof its “iniquities” being punished by God. This chapter continues that theme, describing scenes of ruin and the plundered temple, but also described here is that “Thy prophets have seen vain and foolish things for thee: and they have not discovered thine iniquity, to turn away thy captivity; but have seen for thee false burdens and causes of banishment” – the people believe that they have been punished but are unable to tell why. In fact the poet, speaking as the spirit of Jerusalem, asks of God why He has killed priests and prophets in the temple, and there’s a suggestion of infanticidal cannibalism – “Shall the women eat their fruit, and children of a span long?”

I’ve discussed before about the dubious morality of a god bringing destruction on his people to punish them, particularly when innocents suffer. You either end up with a god that is in fact powerless to stop it, or some vague handwaving about the ways of god surpassing human understanding, which to me is no more an answer than there not being a guiding principle in the first place.

Lamentations 3

“It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the LORD.”

Ha! Well, this chapter almost directly addresses my concerns from the last commentary! In it, the poet starts by complaining of all the bad things that have happened to him, how God has closed Himself off to prayers and sent nothing but troubles to him. But then, the poet learns humility. He realises that despite his troubles, he is still alive, and that this must be due to the mercy of God. The poet decides that God does not punish anyone needlessly, or even lightly, but that through accepting one’s transgressions and putting up with troubles a person can find acceptance with God again. There’s a nice evocative image of prayers getting through a “cloud” that surrounds God once more, when the people accept their failings.

Religions aside, there’s something quite psychotherapeutic about the notion of accepting “sins” (read “character flaws” or “emotional baggage”) before being able to move on from them.

The poet then rather undermines this redemptive message by returning to weeping about inflictions that have faced Jerusalem from enemies without, and asking God to “Persecute and destroy them in anger”. Oh well.

This chapter is written in very short verses – I’ve referred to the author as the “poet” because it looks like this ought to be a song of some kind.

Lamentations 4

“How is the gold become dim! how is the most fine gold changed! the stones of the sanctuary are poured out in the top of every street.”

More bleak imagery, with former priests wandering the streets starving – “their skin cleaveth to their bones; it is withered, it is become like a stick” and people dying slowly of starvation and thirst. The poet compares them to the people of Sodom, who he believes got the better deal by dying quickly. And there’s further suggestion of baby-eating – “The hands of the pitiful women have sodden their own children: they were their meat in the destruction of the daughter of my people”. At least, I think that’s how that reads. It’s all very grim stuff, with no hope given in this chapter, only a veiled threat to the Edomites that they’ll be next. And it brings me back to the same old point again; this all seems to be a very cruel punishment to visit on innocent people for the religious transgressions of a few.

Lamentations 5

“Our fathers have sinned, and are not; and we have borne their iniquities.”

Well this sums up my thoughts nicely – people are starving to death because of something somebody else did. And this chapter, which again is written with short verses giving it a fast-moving metre, asks God why He has forsaken His people. It lists some more grim fates for the scattered Israelites – women ravaged, princes hung up by their hands, people worked to death, people starving in the wilderness. It ends on a very plaintive note; “Thou, O LORD, remainest for ever; thy throne from generation to generation. Wherefore dost thou forget us for ever, and forsake us so long time? Turn thou us unto thee, O LORD, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old. But thou hast utterly rejected us; thou art very wroth against us.”

And that’s it. It feels at least like there ought to be some answer from God, or at least a ray of hope. But then this is called “Lamentations”. I’m assuming that some time before the end of the OT there will at least be a return to Jerusalem by the exiles, and some kind of happy(ish) ending. Because we’ve already caught a glimpse of that in Esther and Nehemiah, so some of these “lesser prophets” coming up must be from that time. But first, we’ve got the last big book of the OT, Ezekiel.