• Bible Book Number 25—Lamentations
    “All Scripture Is Inspired of God and Beneficial”

    • 3, 4. What evidence is there for Jeremiah’s writership?

      3 The book does not name the writer. Yet, there is little doubt it was Jeremiah. In the Greek Septuagint, the book carries this preface: “And it occurred that, after Israel had been taken captive and Jerusalem had been desolated, Jeremiah sat down weeping and lamented with this lamentation over Jerusalem and said.” Jerome considered these words spurious and omitted them from his version. However, the ascribing of Lamentations to Jeremiah is the accepted tradition of the Jews and is confirmed by the Syriac version, the Latin Vulgate, the Targum of Jonathan, and the Babylonian Talmud, among others.

      4 Some critics have tried to prove that Jeremiah did not write Lamentations. However, A Commentary on the Holy Bible cites as evidence of Jeremiah’s writership “the vivid descriptions of Jerusalem in chs.chaps 2 and 4, which are evidently the pen-pictures of an eyewitness; likewise the strongly sympathetic temper and prophetic spirit of the poems throughout, as well as their style, phraseology, and thought, which are all so characteristic of Jeremiah.”a There are many parallel expressions in Lamentations and Jeremiah, such as that of the extreme sorrow of ‘eyes running down with waters (tears)’ (Lam. 1:16; 2:11; 3:48, 49; Jer. 9:1; 13:17; 14:17) and those of disgust at the prophets and priests because of their corruption. (Lam. 2:14; 4:13, 14; Jer. 2:34; 5:30, 31; 14:13, 14) The passages at Jeremiah 8:18-22 and Jer 14:17, 18 show that Jeremiah was quite capable of the mournful style of Lamentations.

      5. By what reasoning do we arrive at the time of writing?

      5 The time of writing is generally agreed to have been soon after the fall of Jerusalem in 607 B.C.E. The horror of both the siege and the burning of the city was still fresh in Jeremiah’s mind, and his anguish is vividly expressed. One commentator remarks that no single facet of sorrow is fully exploited in any given place, but each returns again and again in the several poems. Then he says: “This tumult of thought . . . is one of the very strongest evidences that the book stands close to the events and emotions it purports to communicate.”b