Lamentations 1 - Introduction

Lamentations 1:1-22. The miseries of Jerusalem

The general subject running through this first chapter may be thus subdivided. Lamentations 1:1 lament the sufferings which Jerusalem is now undergoing, while twice in the course of this portion (Lamentations 1:9; Lamentations 1:11) the city itself breaks out into a wail of distress, and thus leads up to the second division of the chapter, Lamentations 1:12, where Jerusalem is (except in Lamentations 1:17) the speaker. In that second part also, her suffering is from time to time (Lamentations 1:14, etc.) spoken of as the consequence of sin. The constantly recurring thoughts are, the desertion of the city by its allies, the privations of the inhabitants, and the overbearing conduct of the conquerors. See Intr. ch. 3 § 2.

We are reminded of the figure on the medal struck by Titus, to commemorate his capture of Jerusalem (a.d. 70), a woman weeping beneath a palm-tree with the inscription below, Judaea capta. "Is it too much to imagine that some Greek artist attached to the court of Vespasian may have borrowed the idea of the coin from the Septuagint version?" Adeney, Canticles and Lam. (Expositor's Bible), p. 99. (See Intr. p. 326.)