Video Transcript: The Unique Literature of Lamentations: An Introduction

We continue our look at the wisdom literature in the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible and the  Old Testament of the Christian Bible. We've gone through a study of Job, Psalms, Proverbs,  Ecclesiastes, and song of song. There's another book related to those that is important to  consider. It's tucked away, probably one of the least read books of the Old Testament, but one that has huge theological significance both in an Old Testament context, as well as the New  Testament context, similar in character because it's poetry. We've looked at the varieties of  poetic expressions in Hebrew poetry, especially synonymous and antithetic. parallelism, it's  filled with those kinds of things acrostics. This is the book of Lamentations, and it's important  to consider the context in which the lamentation songs were written and expressed first, they  are always attached to the prophecies of Jeremiah, they fit with the times of Jeremiah because the lamentations the five laments are actually songs of sorrow for the fall of Jerusalem. And  Jeremiah was living at the time of the fall of Jerusalem, and the themes, the theological  themes expressed in the book of lamentation, echo themes that we find in Jeremiah's  prophecies about the coming end of the city, the destruction by way of the Babylonians and  all of that. Now, in order to fully appreciate these things, let's review what happens. We've  looked at Psalms, especially Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs, as reflecting on are  coming from the time of Solomon that was the zenith or the high point of Israelite influence in the ancient Near East. That was in the nine hundreds BC. Since then, a lot has taken place.  After Solomon died, his young son Ray album took over and basically through his folly lost  most of the kingdom. That's when the kingdom was split 922 BC between north and south  between Israel and Judah, those are the terms that are used. And for 200 years, that duality  went on Israel and Judah from 922 to 722 BC. As the kingdom faltered in its split condition,  little Judah had times when it was surging in significance and growth, but mostly Israel had  times when it was large and influential among the nations, particularly during the times of  Ahab and Jezebel, that was one of the high points of Israel's independent existence from  Judah. But before long, another major player appeared on the scene, and this is the nation of  Assyria. Assyria has long been growing as a power it's an ancient kingdom. It's located in the  northern part of the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys. You can read about Assyria throughout  the Old Testament. Eventually, Assyria would destroy the northern kingdom of Israel in 722  BCE. The Assyrians nearly wiped out Judah as well by the miraculous graces of God by some  very miraculous happenings, Jerusalem and Judah were spared and the Assyrian army was  sent home and you can read about that in both Kings and Chronicles but also in Isaiah's  prophecies because Isaiah was councillor to King Hezekiah at that time, and Hezekiah was the one who narrowly escaped and being destroyed by the Assyrians. As Hezekiah as life unfolds,  he gets emissaries from another kingdom. They are from Babylon. And after Assyria has had  its time in the sun, it's the Babylonians who are actually part of the Assyrian greater kingdom, the Babylonians who become feisty and restless and actually begin to take over their  overlords so that Babylon, you SERPs, a Syria. Now Babylon is located closer to the place  where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers empty into the sea. It's further to the east and south.  But it takes over the whole kingdom of Assyria, and now becomes more intent on pursuing a  relationship taking over Egypt. Well, how do you get from Assyria to Egypt you have to pass  through Palestine. And what's the dominant player there? The only one that's left is little  Judah. And so the the Babylonians begin a new campaign to first sort of of annex Judah. And  then later when the people of Judah are insistent that they're not going to pay tribute to the  king of Babylon, they take over the kingdom of Judah itself. So Assyria was beaten down by  Babylon. The final battle of conquest was really 612 The Battle of Nineveh and 605, the Battle of Carchemish. Those two battles which sort of placed Assyria forever under Babylon, and  now Babylon is on the rise. Assyria had long owned and dominated Egypt. So when the  Babylonians began to revolt, the Egyptian army under Pharaoh Neco was called up as  support, and on the way from Egypt to Carchemish to that final, transitional battle between  Assyria and Babylon, King Josiah of Judah had tried to stop the young Pharaoh, Neco, and had  lost his own life. So it's very interesting, we find these international affairs being addressed  and announced, even in the pages of the Bible. Well, Babylon immediately took over Palestine and made Judah a subject kingdom. They allowed for the local rulers, the sons of David, the  descendants of David to remain as kings of the small province, you might say, but they 

demand attributes. Well, Judah was experiencing a rapid turnover of kings, sometimes  because kings refuse to pay tribute and the Babylonians would come back. And they would  take one family out, or one member of the family out and they'd put a son or an uncle or a  brother in place. And so you go through a variety of kings in a very short time. And everyone  sensed that the end was coming. Judah was shrinking in size. The Babylonians had basically  ripped out all of the trees for their fires and their machines of war. They'd eaten up all the  produce, the smaller towns were basically gone, all of the livestock was gone. It was a  desperate time, and essentially, finally, just Jerusalem was hanging on, and refugees from the whole of the countryside had poured into the city. Some thought we should re flee now while  we've got a chance and go down to Egypt. And the prophets continually said, that's not a  good choice, because Egypt is like a splintered staff that one grabs in order to support oneself as one's walking, and the splinters on the staff bite into one's hands and one eventually only  harms oneself. The prophets continually said that's not what you want to do, even though we  read in the last part of the book of Jeremiah, that some actually snuck through the wall and  tried to do that. And after the city was destroyed, they even took Jeremiah himself against his  will down to Babylon, or down to Egypt. But in that context, you can see the destruction of the city the city is destroyed eventually in 586 by Babylon when they said enough is enough.  Many people are killed so many people have died already. The city is destroyed and the heart  of the city the temple is also destroyed. And a number of people from Judah are pushed into  exile become deported people, people who are refugees, going to a small community in  Babylon itself. That's the setting in which the laments occur. This map shows the extent of the Assyrian Empire. Notice that it flows around the Fertile Crescent. It's part of the great  Mesopotamia which means the land between the rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, but  the Assyrians pressed well beyond that, and eventually down to Egypt, right through  Palestine. And when the Babylonians took over the kingdom of Assyria, notice that Babylon is  the Eastern Province there. They basically usurped the same land area as the Assyrians had,  and part of that included Judah, so that even though the people of Judah escaped the  damaging effects of the Assyrians that had destroyed their northern brothers and sisters, the  kingdom of Israel, the Babylonians took over and accomplish the job and in 586, Jerusalem  and the temple were destroyed. -The laments of Jeremiah or the lamentation ascribed to  Jeremiah because of the similarity and language and themes and also because the times are  the times of Jeremiah, the lam laments or limitations are always pushed, or placed next to  Jeremiah in the scrolls of the Hebrew Scriptures, and that's where they find their place in  Christian scriptures as well. There are five laments four of them are acrostics. That means  that they're the first letters of the successive groupings of lines in the poems follow the  success of letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The fifth is not an acrostic, it almost seems as if all  ordering has been lost. And so it is a poem, but it is not an acrostic. And you do have it as the  same length or size as the others. One, two and three are all the same length, and four and  five are roughly the same, like they're slightly shorter than the others. Each of them has a  different voice. And it will be these differing voices that we'll take a look at spending one  session on each of the laments as we check out what the book of Lamentations is all about.