The lamentations

Liz Boase at TheTorah has reread the Lamentations - as a plural. Traditionally, Jews and Christians have ascribed it to Jeremiah, on account the Bible itself ascribes lamentations to this man. Boase accepts that the first chapter aligns with Jeremiah's theology.

They don't always agree with Jeremiah's use of the cant. Jeremiah 1 and 2 each evoke "daughter-Zion", for pity's sake. Jeremiah might refer to "daughter-Egypt" (50-51 / LXX 27-28) but, to clarify Boase, notes "Bat-Zion" only in v. 6:2 which is contested in Greek (where her "pride" is taken away). "Bat-" is a trope; also mooted in Isaiah 37, in context an antiAssyrian oracle but - I don't find where this is controverted - extant in Jeremiah's time for an antiBabylonian purpose. As we all know, Nabu-kadri-usur II falsified that purpose and, indeed, Zion herself.

The second Isaiah in our chapter 54 will sketch Bat-Zion returning home in glory. It is overall an antiLamentation, if not antiJeremiah. Cyrus II of Anshan has fulfilled Isaiah's promise, one might argue, if belated; I suspect, anyway, that's what Isaiah's editors argued.

I accept that Lamentations 1 is, actually, Jeremiah's (or Baruch's). It fills in the Bat-Zion which the prophet inherited but didn't himself use - in the oracles. Recall that our chapter isn't an oracle. It is a theological reflection.

Skeptics are on firmer ground with the other works in this collection. Lamentations 2 confronts God as an angry, pitiless ... enemy not just of Zion but of all Judaea. Even Jeremiah wouldn't go that far. I am amazed more "counter-Jewish" posters haven't picked up on it. (I am not that poster, for those new here.) Lamentations 4 meanwhile is sympathetic to king-in-exile Zedeqiah; the legal husband of Bat-Zion, some might say. Jeremiah famously hated the man. Lamentations 3 curses Babylon which, also, Jeremiah wouldn't do; by whose authority may we curse the scourge which G-d Himself is wielding?