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(More customer reviews)The Biblical book of Lamentations is a set of five anonymous poems written
some time after the destruction of Jerusalem in 586BC. The tone of the
poems is one of despair, loss, mourning, pain, suffering and deep questioning.
Anyone familiar with the genre of commentary will immediately recognize
this book as a commentary. It is in the Interpretation series and there
is a preface written by the series editors to explain its purpose. The
target audience is those who need to teach, preach or study the Bible
within a community of faith. This means, and the author's preface explicitly
says so, more than just the Christian church, in particular
those of the Jewish faith may also find the volume useful. The commentary series
takes as its basic text the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) of the Bible.
Because of this, the commentary does not provide its own text, either in
the form of the NRSV or a translation prepared by the author. It assumes
the reader will have access to the NRSV or at least some other text.
This seems to me to be the big weakness of the volume and maybe of the series
but I have not read any others in the series to comment. The author is
obviously competent in Hebrew, he provides his own translation at
numerous points and castigates the NRSV for its translation faults many
times. These are poems. Poetry is difficult in any language. One cannot
say that the fundamental problem of understanding the meaning
of the poems in their source language is irrelevant to the preachers,
teachers and students of the Bible. To try to be fair to the author I
expect this was a decision made by the series editors and not by him.
At many places he seems quite keen to deal with these issues.
A second problem that I encountered was that the vocabulary of
the written language was quite out of the ordinary. A number of
times I had to head for a dictionary to understand the meaning of
a word. Several times my thousand page dictionary failed me, twice
because it didn't even have the word, and several other times the
dictionary definition made no sense in the context. In these cases I
had to resort to the internet. While this can be done, it seems to me
a little attention by an author to make their work accessible is deeply
appreciated by the reader.
In terms of structure, there are the two prefaces, a table of contents,
a chapter on introductory matters, five on the poems, and a bibliography
at the end. There is no index.
The author preface sets out his own vision for the commentary, and
has the usual thanks to lots of people and institutions for various
assistance. At one point he refers to God as ``Other''. I've been seeing
this for several decades but I'm still not sure what is intended to be
understood by this designation, this preface still left the issue unclarified.
The introduction only devotes two pages to the issues authorship, date
and place of composition. Again I expect this is because of the series
emphasis on the use of the texts in preaching and teaching but these
are quite fundamental issues which should inform any teaching from
these poems. Over half of the 48 page introduction is devoted to issues
of theology. This is quite interesting as it appears to me that the
individual poems and their collection into a book do not attempt to construct
a theology as such. Nevertheless, there is a theological background out of
which the poets write which must be understood. The balance of
the chapter (it precedes the section on theology) is devoted to the
literary features of the collection. Again, the choice by the poet of
the form which he chooses to write in is of significance and an attempt must
be made to understand the significance of the specific forms used.
This is well written.
The five chapters devoted to the five poems breaks them down into
manageable pieces and walks the reader through them verse by verse.
There are a number of issues which cannot be addressed in such a low
level approach to the text and the author provides a number of sections
which he labels as an ``Excursus'' to deal with wider issues which cover
more than a single poem. There are two in the chapters on poems one
and three and one each in the chapters on poems four and five.
The last excursus is on the silence of God. In the poems God appears
many times. He is accused, railed against, pleaded with, and so on, both
directly and indirectly but there is no place that you can point to
and say -- here God speaks. This silence forms a key part of the larger
structure of the book of Lamentations and the author provides an insightful
and thoughtful discussion of this theologically difficult aspect.
The chapters on the poems are competently written as you would expect from
someone who is a Professor of Old Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary.
However, one interpretation I take serious issue with is the in the third
poem. It opens with ``I am the man...''. In Hebrew this word translated ``man''
is not the common word for a man but GBR. The author interprets this as being
``everyman''. I could find no lexical support for this. This word is better
understood to mean something like a strong man, a valiant man, a warrior,
or something similar. As this identification informs the way he interprets the
remainder of the poem, I found this to be the weakest part of the book.
The bibliography is usefully divided into two parts: a list of works
for further study and a list of the works cited in the text.
Commentaries are not intended as light reading but rather to
provoke you to think deeply about the texts. The present work does this. Even
in the case where you ultimately come to disagree with the author's
interpretations, its is a valuable exercise to work through what he
has to say.
My final judgment of three stars comes, in part, from the fact that I
think people award stars far too generously. Three is good in my view.
But I can not recommend this as the starting point for the study of
Lamentations. You need the so-called historical-critical commentary as
your starting point. Once you have worked through one of them
then this makes an excellent next choice.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Lamentations (Interpretation, a Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching)
The destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC, which led to the exile of the people of Israel, drastically changed the community's life. In the midst of this darkness, the five poems collected to form the biblical "Book of Lamentations" emerged as a life-embracing work. This commentary aims to make the message of "Lamentations" come alive to Christians today. The distinctiveness of the Palestinian voice found in these poems is maintained as they bear witness to the horror of pain and human suffering. Yet, beneath the words, a determined will to live emerges to confront human suffering, probe God's actions and anticipate a new kind of human community.
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