📖 The Book of Lamentations
Start reading →Old Testament · 5 chapters · Prophet
Grief over Jerusalem's destruction — and hope in God's faithfulness.
Who wrote Lamentations?
Author
Jeremiah (traditional)
Written
c. 586 BC
Genre
Prophet
Five poetic dirges over fallen Jerusalem. Authorship unstated in the text.
Why Lamentations was written
Five poems of intense mourning over the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BC, processing the trauma of exile while confessing sin and clinging to the faithfulness of God.
Outline of Lamentations
- 11: Jerusalem personified as a grieving widow
- 22: God's judgment — no comfort
- 33: The man of suffering — hope in the midst of grief
- 44: The siege and its horrors
- 55: A communal prayer for restoration
Key verses
Lamentations 1:12Lamentations 3:22-23Lamentations 3:39
How Lamentations points to Christ
The suffering figure of Lamentations 3 — the man who has seen affliction, mocked and beaten — prefigures Christ as the suffering servant who bears the full weight of divine judgment on behalf of his people.
How Lamentations begins
1How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! how is she become as a widow! she that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary!
Read Lamentations 1 →