Acrostics and Lamentations

‘Perhaps There is Hope’ : Reading Lamentations as a Polyphony of Pain, Penitence, and Protest

“…This critique has been especially salient in feminist appraisals of Bakhtin, where the power relation between women and men is recognised as a key factor inhibiting truly dialogic interaction. 160 The question becomes: "How can one (individual or) group really relate to another without exploitation, dominance, or annihilation-not so much in the abstract as given the obvious history of the procedure and the uneven positions from which men and women now start?" 161 This question of uneven dialogue between genders is particularly pertinent in relation to Lamentations, which includes an opening male voice (the Lamenter), a female voice (Zion), and a further male voice (the rbg).…”

“…The question is whether these "prestige" voices maintain their position of unimpeachable power as authoritative discourse, or whether they are somehow undermined, contexually. 160 See Pollock,"What is Left Out,and O'Connor,"Horror,Authors,and Heroes,. 161 Green,Bakhtin and Biblical Scholarship,59;cf.…”

“…159 In a Deuteronomistic framework the destruction of Jerusalem is "a deserved and necessary punishment for sin, a punishment whose magnitude is in proportion to the transgressions committed." 160 Note the introduction of the question of magnitude, or measure. 161 This becomes a key factor in interpreters' assessments of whether Lamentations should be read as a theodicy or an antitheodicy.…”

“…He concludes that due to the "lack [of] any degree of clarity with respect to the nature of the transgressions in question," the "theodicy content of this statement can thus be disregarded." 160 While Boase does not dispense with the theodic content entirely, she suggests that the "various description of misery motifs" surrounding 1:5, along with the "lack of specificity" at least creates "tension in understanding the extreme nature of Yahweh's treatment of the city." 161 The interpretive question in 1:1-9b depends to some extent on whether Zion's disheveled state is a result of menstruation, adultery, or rape.…”

“…107 Berlin detects a note of incredulity, as if the nations reflect Zion's own belief in her inviolability (Berlin,Lamentations,7); contra Salters, who sees the statements "reflecting not so much the thinking of others as Jerusalemites themselves" (Salters,Lamentations,160). 108 Cf.…”