Lamentations, BOOK OF, a canonical book of the Old Testament which, in the present arrangement of the Hebrew Bible, occupies the sixth place among the Hagiographa (between Ruth and Ecclesiastes), and bears the superscription 'Echa' ('Ah, how; 'see chaps. i. 1; ii. 1; iv. 1). In the Talmud and elsewhere it is called the book of Kinoth ('elegies' or 'dirges'), a name which reappears in the Septuagint title Thrēnoi (Lat. Lamentationes or Lamenta). The fuller title, Lamentations of Jeremiah, is found in the Syriac and in some MSS. of the Septuagint, but is not so old as the shorter form. The book consists of five dirges or laments, the first four of which are alphabetical acrostics (like Ps. cxix.); each of the five consists of twenty-two verses, except the third, which has sixty-six. In general character the first four are very similar, each beginning with a representation of the great calamity that has befallen the city and people, and then rising through the thought of Jehovah's righteousness to the hope of his just vengeance on the enemies of his people. The fifth differs from the others in that it takes the form of a prayer and is throughout pervaded by a sense of Jehovah's wrath, which is spoken of as having been long continued. The tradition, which attributes the authorship of Lamentations to Jeremiah, can be traced to a note prefixed to the Septuagint translation, where, as in the Syriac, they are now attached to the book of that prophet. Perhaps, indeed, this tradition is already implied in 2 Chron. xxxv. 25, in which case the supposed reference to Josiah must be sought in Lam. iv. 20. The internal evidence is rather against the attribution of the Book of Lamentations to the prophet. Nägelsbach, following Ewald, has shown how completely different is its style from that of Jeremiah; some of the indications that were at one time supposed to make for his authorship disappear on closer examination; and the anticipated restoration of Israel is somewhat dissimilar in the two works.
See Ewald's Dichter des Alten Bundes, vol. i. (2d ed. 1866), and the commentaries of Nägelsbach (1868; Eng. trans. 1871), Keil (1872; Eng. trans. 1874), and Payne Smith (in Speaker's Commentary).