Lamentations 1-2 "Keep Watch" 10/23/2024

The Book of Lamentations is made up of five Hebrew poems known as dirge poetry.
They are like a funeral dirge.
They mourn the destruction of Judah and Jerusalem.
The Book of Lamentations was written in acrostic form, so schoolchildren could remember and recite it.
An acrostic poem is written so that the first letter of each line, word, or paragraph spells out a word or phrase at the end.
There are 22 Hebrew letters, and chapters 1, 2, and 4 each have twenty-two verses… Each verse begins with a Hebrew letter, like Psalm 119.
Chapter three is 66 verses long, so when you divide that by 3…you get one Hebrew letter for every three verses.
Chapter five also has 22 verses but isn’t laid out as an acrostic.
In the book, Israel looks back on the agony over God’s retribution of Israel for its sins.
Whereas Jeremiah looked forward to God reaffirming the covenant with Israel after the 70 years in Babylon were up.
Lamentations is read on the Ninth of Av in observance of the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple by the Babylonians in 586 BCE and the destruction of the rebuilt Temple by the Romans in 70 AD.
The day is also a day to remember and mourn other catastrophes that have befallen the Jewish people.
It is a solemn day marked with fasting and prayer.