Writer: Jeremiah

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.