Book of Lamentations

מאמר זה מציג את "נוסח תפילת ראש השנה" מתוך סידור קדום מתקופת הגאונים, המכונה "שימושא עתיקא דגאונים". הסידור, שנמצא בקטעי גניזת קהיר ומתוארך למאה התשיעית, קדום לסידוריהם של רב עמרם גאון ורב סעדיה גאון. המאמר מנתח את מבנה הסידור, הכולל שלוש שכבות: נוסח הפנים המקורי, הגהות על הגליון, והגהות נוסח.
המחקר מתמקד במחלוקות בין גאוני בבל בנוגע לנוסח תפילות ראש השנה, במיוחד בשלושה עניינים: אמירת "ותתן לנו מועדים לשמחה", אמירת "והשיאנו", ואמירת "ואין אנו יכולים לעלות ולהראות" במוסף. בעוד גאוני סורא וישיבת ראש הגולה תמכו בנוסחים אלו, גאוני פומבדיתא ומאוחר יותר חכמי אשכנז התנגדו להם.
הסידור הנדון משקף עמדה אמצעית בין המסורות, ומעיד על התפתחות נוסחי התפילה בתקופת הגאונים וההשפעות השונות עליהם. המאמר מציג את מהדורת הסידור עם נוסח התפילה המקורי וההגהות השונות, ודן בהיבטים הלשוניים וההיסטוריים של הנוסחים השונים.

What might emerge in a conversation between the authors of Lamentations and the authors of the lament psalms-or protest psalms, as I prefer to call them? I here take up one theme from each chapter of Lamentations and set one or two psalms alongside each chapter.1 I treat both Lamentations and Psalms as texts provided for people to pray. I don't know how far they reflect personal experience or feelings on the part of their authors, but I assume that they found a place in their respective collections because they were thought useful for other people to pray.

This chapter offers an examination of Lamentations and Song of Songs in order to offer further insights on 'placedness', which McConville references in his treatment of Being Human in God's World (2016). While place and persona are intertwined in Lamentations to illustrate the destruction of identity and place (the epitome of placelessness), in the Song the praise of people using place constructs identity and communicates belonging (the ideal of placedness). The reading of these texts is informed by Indigenous Theologies which emphasise the connection between humanity and the natural world. By doing so it offers a fresh lens and exegetical insight from under-explored Hebrew Bible texts for understanding the loss and hope of place.

While frameworks of purity and impurity were widespread in ancient West Asia and well known before the exile, many exilic and postexilic sources focalize purity concerns. This article will explore the connection between ancient West Asian texts associating or equating conquered groups with filth and disgust-eliciting substances and the focus on impurity-removal that is so obtrusive in post-exilic biblical sources. I will argue that the rituals of purification detailed in the priestly texts of the Pentateuch constituted practices of rehumanization, seeking to alleviate the deep-seated sense of filth and impurity that a variety of texts from the exilic and post-exilic eras so clearly exhibit. These priestly texts arguably offered to Judeans both purification and a path to healing from the dehumanizing violence suffered by earlier generations, violence leaving aftereffects still felt by postexilic communities, as various early postexilic texts demonstrate.

The problem of defining and categorising parentheticals is long-standing in the theoretical linguistic literature. While some Biblical Hebrew scholarship has touched on this area, previous studies are almost exclusively concerned with narrative prose. In this essay I follow a variant of Holmstedt’s approach, appealing to a plurality of diagnostics for identifying parentheticals, while arguing that a prototype-theoretical approach best accounts for the diverse syntactic configurations which can constitute a parenthetical. Examples of parentheticals are identified and discussed from the books of Ezekiel and the Psalms—considered representative of prophetic and poetic literature—in the pursuit of advances both theoretical-linguistic and exegetical. In contrast to prose texts, care must be taken to account for line divisions and linear syntax in poetry. It will be shown that, despite serving distinct discourse functions from those in narrative prose, parentheticals are a prevalent syntactic configuration in prophetic and poetic literature of the Hebrew Bible.

El documento presenta la conferencia realizada el jueves 17 de julio de 2025 en el XII Congreso Internacional de Biblia, llevado a cabo en la Universidad Pontifica Bolivariana. Existen al interior de las Sagradas Escrituras muchos pasajes que, incluso, si son considerados Palabra de Dios, están constituidos de palabras contra Dios. En esta charla, se afronta el tema delicado, difícil, que pone una vez más, en escena, la dramática situación del sufrimiento, incapacitante y enceguecedor, y el papel de Dios en los espacios y tiempos de destrucción de las ciudades, del exilio, del desplazamiento forzado, del empobrecimiento, de la inanición, de la enfermedad, de la muerte y de la tentación de creer que es imposible la esperanza.

Comparing the early second millennium Mesopotamian laments over the destruction of cites and temples, it is suggested that Megillat Eikha was complied in conjunction with the rebuilding of the Jerusalem Temple in the late 6th century BCE. This piece is derived from a full article "The Book of Lamentations..." (uploaded onto academia.edu some time ago).

Jewish history includes many catastrophes of kinds that ended civilizations and peoples, but somehow Jewish civilization survived to the present day.  How?  There were always choices about how to respond to catastrophe.  One is negative and another is positive and constructive.  Jewish history continues as a result of a philosophy of purpose and hope.  This paper, written for a Carnegie Peace conference in 2002, explores that history.

• Un même terme hébraïque (šûlîm) désigne l'ourlet d'une jupe, d'une robe ou d'une tunique dans la Bible hébraïque. Ce mot est employé à la fois pour des personnages masculins (prêtres, divinité) et féminins (personnifications de Jérusalem/Sion et de Ninive). Cet article s'intéresse à la construction genrée des corps-masculinité divine et sacerdotale, féminité urbaine et violentée-que ce simple mot permet d'entrevoir. En effet, dans le cas des personnifications féminines, la mention des šûlîm signifie chaque fois une manipulation agressive, un retroussage qui annonce une violence sexuelle. La robe de majesté de YHWH (Is 6, 1) et la robe sale de Jérusalem (Lm 1, 9) retiendront ici l'attention.

Six Duos pour deux Violons ou deux Mandolines avec une Basse ad Libitum DUO V 1. Comodo 04'42" 2. Alla Maniera Siciliana 04'57" (compassionevole andantinetto di molto) 3. Alla Venezia 03'31" (allegro assai e con brio) DUO I 4. Andante con Moto 03'17" 5. Alla francese Furiosamente (furioso e staccato) 03'39" 6. Andantino Amoroso 03'57" (Una bella ed amabile Parigina che canta e s'accompagna col mandolino a fin d'innamorare un cavaliere che le siede allato).

In the preceding discussions, we have argued that despite the devastating effects of Yahweh’s judgment on the city of Jerusalem and the temple, the attack was not frenzied or unmeditated.
Instead, set to discredit the fraudulent doctrine that Jerusalem is inviolable, Yahweh channels his assault on the architectural as well as the cultic system of Zion. In so doing, God shows that without his presence and protective hand, the city is left vulnerable to the attack of enemies. Lamentations 2 also spells out the crippling effects the crisis has on Zion, both for the present as well as for the future. In the present, the city’s ruination not only invites the mockery of passers-by, but it also costs the lives of its residents, particularly the children. As the privileges that once were bestowed upon Zion are removed, the promise that the city will become an eschatological epicenter of life and worship is also rescinded.

Where Shall Wisdom Be Found: A Grammatical Tribute to Professor Stephen A. Kaufman honors Stephen A. Kaufman, Professor Emeritus of Bible and Cognate Literature at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) and co-founder of the Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon project, for his contributions to the world of Semitic studies and for his influence on young scholars of Bible and ancient Near Eastern studies. Professor Kaufman is a distinguished professor, internationally known expert and scholar, who for several decades guided the doctoral work of numerous graduate students in Hebrew and Cognate Studies at HUC-JIR (Cincinnati). A prolific author, editor, and innovator in the field of Semitic linguistics, Professor Kaufman challenged his students to delve deep into the study of Semitic languages in order to identify what the original authors intended to communicate in these ancient texts. Furthermore, he inspired countless scholars to reexamine the traditional interpretation of Semitic linguistic features and age-old seemingly unshakable paradigms of Akkadian, Ugaritic, Hebrew, Aramaic, and other Semitic languages.
Shaped by the expertise of Professor Kaufman, the scholars who contributed to this volume present recent developments in the study of the morphology, grammar, and syntax of Biblical Hebrew: nouns; adjectives; adverbs; definiteness; prepositions; tense, mood, and aspect; the verbal stems (binyanim); qatal; yiqtol;Â volitives; weqatal; wayyiqtol; participles; infinitives; conjunction and disjunction; Hebrew poetry; and Hebrew pedagogy. The volume is intended to serve as a scholarly resource for those interested in the morphological and syntactic features of Biblical Hebrew and as a textbook for advanced Biblical Hebrew classes in institutions of higher learning.

בשני קטעי גניזה השייכים לשני טפסים השתמרו שרידים מפירוש קדמון למגילת רות. לפי כל מאפייני הפירוש, הוא הפירוש האבוד של רב שמואל בר חפני גאון סורא למגילה, עליו העיד רבי יוסף ראש הסדר. אך האם יתכן שהוא מתייחס לאחד מקודמיו בביטוי "אחד הגאונים" (בעץ' אלגאונים), ביטוי שנכנס לשימוש מאתיים שנים אחריו? ואולי הוא משתמש בו מילולית, ולא כביטוי? במאמר מוהדרים שני הקטעים בליווי הערות ומבוא מקיפים.

Genesis 15:6 has long been interpreted-particularly within Christian theology-as when YHWH declares 'Avram righteous based on his faith. This reading, heavily influenced by Paul's appeal to the Septuagint (LXX), has served as a cornerstone for the doctrine of "justification by faith alone." This study argues that verse 15:6, when translated in light of the Hebrew syntax and literary context, does not support such a reading. A syntactically correct and more contextually faithful rendering is therefore proposed: "But 'Avram trusted in YHWH, and reckoned His promises-sincere though unfulfilled-as righteousness." Through a detailed analysis of Hebrew grammar, narrative sequencing, and scene structurealongside a critical comparison with the LXX-this paper demonstrates that the traditional reading obscures the original Hebrew nuance. Moreover, it is not until the Aqedah (Genesis 22) that 'Elohim finally and explicitly judges 'Avraham's righteousness, but doing so based on covenantal obedience (22:12). This reinterpretation returns us to the voice of the Hebrew narrator, whose theology of justification is expressed not as a forensic imputation, but as faithfulness tested and proven through obedience.

The research goal of this project is to establish over a corpus of 2000+ lines that in ancient Hebrew verse, at the macrostructural level, there are bilateral symmetries everywhere within which trilateral asymmetries are nested, and vice versa. A concomitant goal is to develop a taxonomy of the patterns that repeat themselves.

This draft is meant to track interim core research conclusions with respect to specific poetic units, for which form-and-content summaries are offered.

This is an informative paper on the methodological issues in the study of the Old Testament submitted to the Federated Faculty of Research in Religion and Culture, Kottayam, as part of my doctoral studies. It gives a synopsis of the major methods in the study of the Old Testament, and gives a critical review of the use of these methods.

Taking the above quotation by Don Ihde as my point of departure here I wish to investigate and discuss silence as a qualitative element in music and poetry. Qualifying this aspect at a NorSound seminar in Denmark in June 2013, the French sociologist and expert on the role of sound in urban environments Jean Paul Thibaud stated: “ Silence is not synonymous with lack of expression—it can be understood as a step from one qualitative mode to another.” On the basis of these two phenomenologically based assertions I wish to pursue and unfold the qualitative and aesthetic role of “the rest” in music and poetry through two specifi c examples, namely a vocal piece by Arvo Pärt and three short poems by the Finland-Swedish poet Gunnar Björling. This qualitative mode is investigated through the performative aspects of two concepts: the general pause in music and the enjambment in poetry. The general pause in music is discussed in continuation of its ability to create an interlude or hesitation,...

The last decade has seen a significant expansion in Lamentations research. Since 2013, over 30 new commentaries and monographs have been published on various topics in this short biblical book, along with dozens of articles and essays. Many of these studies represent extensions of the once ‘new’ trends of the 2000s—literary studies, feminist interpretations, trauma readings, and reception historical studies—while others have pushed Lamentations research into even ‘newer’ territories (iconographic exegesis, performance criticism, intertextual approaches, and so forth). This essay traces these various trends in Lamentations research and surveys many publications from the last decade.

The article examines the previously unknown catalog of musical works compiled by E. Hiller, the cantor of the Lutheran parish of St. Mary Magdalene in Breslau (Wrocław) at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. This source, preserved in the State Archives in Wrocław, provides valuable insights into the musical repertoire of the parish, which included compositions by both Protestant and Catholic composers. The catalog documents the collection used in worship services and concerts, illustrating how repertoire selection shaped the identity of the local community. The concept of collective memory, as developed by M. Halbwachs, is employed to demonstrate music’s role as a tool for constructing and preserving cultural and religious traditions. The study also takes into account the musical holdings of St. Christopher’s Church, which was affiliated with the same parish. The analysis of musical sources from both churches, in the context of E. Bohn’s publications, offers a deeper understanding of the history of musical life in this community, the phenomenon of musical ecumenism in Breslau, and the relationship between liturgical repertoire and parish identity.

What is the meaning of ‘The Party of God’? This article examines Hezbollah through the through the prism of Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah’s thought, focusing on his al-haraka al-islamiyya humum wa-qadaya (The Islamic Movement: Concerns and Issues). Fadlallah conceptualised Hezbollah as a fusion of contradictions: spiritual versus political, party versus movement, umma versus nationalism, spirituality versus Jihadist sacrifice and wilayat-e faqih versus multiple authority. This article argues that Fadlallah’s thought reflected a pragmatic approach that stemmed from a recognition of the profound devastation caused by Lebanon’s civil war and the need to align with the prevailing socio-political conditions. Fadlallah embodied scholarly and ideological connections with the Shiʿi milieu and with Sunni Islamists, that transcended the nation-state. Yet, his return to Lebanon and the desire to offer an alternative to Amal necessitated a more localised focus. His vison of Hezbollah reflected an inherent tension between idealism and realism. Yet, it also perhaps revealed an understanding for a phased process toward achieving Hezbollah’s multifaceted objectives, as a social, political, and jihadist movement. For Fadlallah, these diverse elements were components of a unified worldview, where seemingly disparate elements converge within a broader interconnected schema of dialectical engagement, toward achieving Hezbollah’s ultimate objectives.

Late scholarship on Lamentations has focused on comparative analysis between Lamentations and Mesopotamian city-lament poems. These comparisons have helped to distinguish Lamentations from the rest of Biblical Hebrew poetry, in particular Psalmic laments. This paper draws on the growing body of compositional analysis of Hebrew poetics to highlight semantically related poems throughout the book of the Twelve which have strong correspondence with Lamentations 4. First, I demonstrate that the Oracles against  and Day of the Lord oracles of the pre-exilic prophets create a micro-corpus of not only lexical collocations, but of shared metaphors and symbols, deep poetic structures, and analogical correspondences. Second, I affirm that the book of Lamentations is analogically related to Mesopotamian city-laments under the same methods developed above. Since divine incursion and human response, a core structuring logic of Mesopotamian city-laments, are thus present within the book of the Twelve and Lamentations, the two texts demonstrate further cohesion. Under this same consideration, Lady Zion is read analogically to the tutelary deity of the Mesopotamian city-laments, begging the chief god of the pantheon to reinstate the city.
This paper concludes by suggesting a reformatting of associations between city-lament texts and what are traditionally considered prophetic. It is plausible, then, to establish the force and purpose behind Lamentations as a prophetic message, not merely as a salient lament poem.

Jeremiah 36:32: "Then took Jeremiah another roll, and gave it to Baruch the scribe, the son of Neriah; who wrote therein from the mouth of Jeremiah all the words of the book which Jehoiakim king of Judah had burned in the fire: and there were added besides unto them many like words." For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare [are] not fleshly but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. And they will be ready to punish all disobedience, when your obedience is fulfilled. (2 Corinthians 10:3-6)

This article is dedicated to the Hebrew term Tannin, which appears in the Bible and signifies a monster, giant serpent, sea snake. Ancient translations-the Septuagint, Symmachus, Aquila and Theodotion-combined it with another Hebrew word, tannim (appearing in the Bible only in the plural form). This probably happened due to the similarity between these forms. St. Jerome does not distinguish between these words either. In those places where they appear, he consistently translates them using the Latin word draco, the meaning of which is so broad that it encompasses both a mythical, giant serpentine monster and a typical snake found in the wild. However, in some problematic places, where such an identification would have aroused controversy, he decided on introducing different equivalents more fitting to the context. There are two such places: in the Book of Lamentations (4:3), where he used the equivalent of Lamiae, and in the Book of Isaiah (13:22), where he translated tannim as 'Sirens'. Jerome's view of Tannin/tannim as equivalents shows us that, although he drew from his Greek predecessors, he does not follow them uncritically, and decides to choose his own interpretational propositions and solutions. As we can see from the examples discussed, he makes these distinctions by taking into consideration the imagery, symbolism and a whole range of associations. He tries his best to choose more familiar, ancient Greco-Roman names for culturally remote and incomprehensible Hebrew terms.

1.I have used the abbreviations TgQoh and BibQoh throughout this article. To the best of my knowledge, they were first used in a series of two articles by Alexander (2011:83-101, 102-115). BibQoh refers to sections from the Hebrew Bible. 2.The dating of TgQoh is uncertain and ranges between the 7th century C.E (Knobel 1991), 8th and 9th centuries CE (Levine 1978), and Gottlieb (2014) suggested a much later date into antiquity, from 11th century or later. The consensus is a period between 500 CE as terminus a quo and 1101 as the terminus ad quem. The purpose of this study is to identify and explain a religious paradigm in Targum Qohelet (TgQoh). Targum Qohelet is dated to a period between 500 CE and 1101 CE. This study concludes that the most probable setting for this Targum was the beit midrash (the house of study). A paradigmatic research approach is used to identify the range of translation components to explain the translation method employed in TgQoh and the rationale behind it. This research approach reveals how the translator(s) used their interpretative ability to create a completely different thought-world when compared with the original Hebrew Text. Various subparadigms emerge as a network of connected religious beliefs to form a cogent systematic rabbinic theology of a perfect world order to replace the pessimism of the Hebrew base text. The Aramaic version reflects a complete solution to the existential problems raised by Biblical Qohelet. It seeks to provide humankind with guidelines for creating a 'perfect world' both on earth and in the afterlife. The use of a paradigmatic analysis based on the concept of a 'perfect world' provides an ideal model for analysing the translation strategy of TgQoh and understanding its method of rendering. The application of paradigmatic methodology bridges the gap between the relatively secular nature of the Hebrew version of Qohelet (Ecclesiastes) and the overwhelmingly and inescapable theological forms of the Aramaic targum. The paradigms in the Aramaic translation identify how the targum applied rabbinic ideology to explain the meanings that lies behind the original Hebrew text of Qohelet. The paradigms, when taken together reveal how the cynical nature of Hebrew Qohelet was changed into a rabbinical guide for righteous living, here described as 'perfect world'.

The book of Lamentations is virtually synonymous with the acrostic form. It is nearly impossible to describe the book without mentioning the importance of this structuring device found in the first four poems explicitly and latent in the twenty-two non-alphabetized verses of chapter 5. Readers have proposed a host of explanations for the acrostic’s significance in the book: a mnemonic aid for vocal performance, a means of expressing grief’s totality (A to Z), a literary confinement for suffering’s chaos, a linguistic vessel for holding together suffering’s complexity, an imitation of suffering’s maddening repetition, and so forth. Building upon these (and other) interpretations, this paper (re-)considers the acrostic’s visual appeal specifically and proffers a reading of Lamentations as a kind of concrete poetry. Although the acrostic may indeed have played a role in guiding ancient listeners or jogging the mind of its performers, its subtlety in chapters 1, 2, and 4 especially would likely have escaped the notice of all but the most perspicacious of listeners. The acrostic thus functioned, even if only subtly, as a means of engaging the eye, as well as the ear. As recent research has argued, Lamentations (or parts of it) may therefore represent a true Judahite literature, written for readers or private audiences first, as opposed to the public stage. With these considerations in mind, this paper will (1) consider the acrostic’s rendering in select Hebrew and Greek manuscripts as a means of elucidating its visuality, (2) propose a reading of the book as a literary “memorial,” whereby the poetry becomes a collection of word objects to be “seen” and “remembered” (cf. 1:9, 11, 12, 18; 2:20; 3:36, 63; 5:1), and (3) explores the theological significance of “viewing” these texts with God, Zion’s listener and reader.

The imagery of war and suffering in Lamentations presents many issues for contemporary readers. Though interpreters may commend the book for its honest testimony, its vivid descriptions of suffering children (2:11–12, 20–22; 4:10; 5:11) and troubling choice of metaphors (e.g., 1:8–10; cf. 2:4; 5:11) often disturb its interpreters, and the book has been criticized for such features. Many have claimed that these images foster compassion and just action within its readership, but in these assessments, the connection between viewing (or imagining) images of suffering and responding ethically is often assumed more than demonstrated. This paper seeks to explore that relationship more closely. It will ask what the book of Lamentations wants the reader to “do” or the kind of person its discourse seeks to produce with special consideration of the book’s imagery: What violent content does the book “show” the reader? How do the poetics of this imagery—how the poet frames these scenes—impinge upon the reader and form certain ethical responses rather than others? This paper will address these and related questions in a comparative manner, by drawing upon the fields of photography ethics and visual culture theory, specifically as it pertains to the complicated moral response elicited by images of human suffering. Many in these fields describe the distance generated between the viewer and the sufferer when the former “sees” the latter in image media. They also problematize the assumed connection between viewing images of suffering, feeling compassion for the depicted sufferer, and responding with ethical action. In light of these findings, this paper will thus examine how violence imagery figures in Lamentations, how this imagery may elicit complex (moral) responses from readers, and how the poetry might guide the reader beyond mere viewing into critical examination conducive of moral disposition and action.

As many have noted, the absence of any divine speech in Lamentations constitutes one of the fundamental theological problems of the book. Though Daughter Zion (1:9–11, 20–22; 2:20–22), the geber (3:55–66), and the community (3:42–48; 5:1–22) address God directly, no explicit divine reply ever surfaces (cf. 3:57). One must look elsewhere to hear God’s comforting speech—namely, 2Isa, which, as many have argued, appears to know and respond specifically to the prayers of Lamentations. Though descriptions of God’s actions and character abound in the book, their conflicting (and often disturbing) portraits resist integration. What then are the implications of piecing together the theology of a book that solicits a God who remains conspicuously silent in the face of horrendous evil? Where is God to be found in a poetic sequence that seeks God out to no avail? In this paper, I address the problem of divine silence in Lamentations with special consideration of the use of apostrophe in the book’s lyric poetry. I draw upon the discussion of apostrophe’s significance in lyric theory to consider how the poet fosters intimacy with God via the immediacy of the lyric, despite the (felt) absence of God. As Helen Vendler notes, the lyric has the constitutive ability to create intimacy within and despite loneliness not simply for the sake of expressing relation to an unseen other but also to redefine the terms of that relation altogether. This paper will consider how the lyricism of Lamentations—in the voices of Daughter Zion and the community specifically—manufacture divine proximity within divine silence. In this reading, Lamentations thus represents a drawing near to and of God by the power of the lyric.

The publication of Keel’s Symbolism of the Biblical World (German 1972, English 1978) demonstrated the val-ue of ancient Near Eastern iconography for interpreting biblical texts. In the intervening decades since (and of) Keel’s work, iconographic exegesis of the Hebrew Bible has witnessed significant methodological and theoretical developments, many of which can be broadly characterized by an increasing concern with issues of histor(icit)y and contiguity in the image-text comparison. The present work represents a (re)turn to a phenomenological approach to iconographic exegesis that is especially concerned with how images and texts might mutually inform one another at the level of their respective poetics. As a test case for such a comparison, this volume examines how the phenomenon of violence figures in Lamentations 2 and in Ashurbanipal’s palace reliefs - specifically, one of the Battle of Til-Tuba programs (Southwest Palace, Room 33) and the lion hunt reliefs (North Palace, Room C).

The project begins with a discussion of the neurological and cognitive relationship between seeing images with the eye and imagining them with the “mind’s eye” as a means of justifying such a phenomenological approach that compares how ancient artists and the biblical author construct the violent images that are seen and imagined in their works, respectively (ch. 1). It then conducts detailed analyses of the poetics of violent imagery in Lamentations 2 (chs. 2-3), the Battle of Til-Tuba reliefs (ch. 4), and Ashurbanipal’s lion hunt reliefs (ch. 5) before providing an extended comparison of the similar and divergent ways that violence figures in the literary and textual images of each piece (ch. 6). Overall, the volume profers new interpretive insights concerning the phenomenon of violence in the ancient Near Eastern artwork and Lamentations 2 specifically - particularly as it pertains to the poem’s construction of Yahweh’s and Zion’s bodies, its perspectival play, its manipulation of time, and the “power” of its imagery in eliciting the divine gaze. The project also demonstrates the utility of ancient Near Eastern art for illuminating not only what but also how a given phenomenon figures in biblical poetry and vice versa.

Zion herself. The promise and peril of the "surplus of vision" is that the vision allows the interpreter, according to Green, to "see some facets of the others that they cannot see for themselves." 3 The supervision of which the Bakhtinian hermeneut goes proud is also a type of supervision by which she maintains control. The fundamental persona of Lam 1-2, a city personified as a widow whose loss is limitless, is suppressed by Mandolfo in favor of another persona, an avowedly strong reader, herself. The terms of this suppression are discussed below. Zion's prayer in Lam 1-2 is that God 4 see her as she sees herself. She makes her request with insistence, four times: 1:9, 11, 20; 2:20. In the economy of the book, her prayer goes unanswered. Those who await her salvation, the fulfillment of the promises which regard her, have wept for and with Zion ever since. 5 So long as she remains a shadow of her promised self, a [150] glass of wine is broken in her honor at Jewish weddings the world over, by the groom on the most joyous day of his life and that of his bride. Jesus wept over her (Luke 19:41-44). Paul expected that the Deliverer would come from her (Rom 11:26-27). Christians since, with few exceptions, have abandoned her. They have widowed her all over again, literally and figuratively. Some people weep with her and for her still, and some have, literally and figuratively, repopulated her. Those who see themselves as her alter ego, who have suffered as she has, have always had a stake in seeing her as she sees herself in Lam 1-2. Zion is a populated place, in more ways than one. She is not just a persona. Whenever Zion is treated as a nonentity, she becomes the target of violence all over again. Zion continues to exist between Lam 1-2 on the one hand and Isa 1:21-26 and 2:2-5 on the other. Zion is also, I dare say, the little shepherd girl of which Dahlia Ravikovitch has spoken. 6 I vocalize the poem as an aid to those whose knowledge of Hebrew is limited to that of the Bible. For the purpose of bilingual presentation, longer lines are bisected (marked by a terminal underscore).

This article is a response to Ernst Wendland's article-also in this issue of Journal of Translation-which interacts with my cognitive approach to biblical Hebrew poetry, especially my recent monograph, Unparalleled Poetry (2023). In this article, I set my work within the broader context of biblical poetry studies and explain how it draws from literary and cognitive research to provide a robust framework for the concept of the poetic line-a contribution to not only biblical studies, but also broader poetry studies. The poetic line gets to the heart of the nature of poetry: the line is central to not just poetic structure (up to the level of the whole poem), but also poetry's potential for rhythm and effects and construction of meaning. My view of the centrality of the line affects how I address various issues related to parallelism. I close by discussing the role and limits of method in regard to both poetic lineation and reading of poems.

In this essay, I argue that attention to "gender" in Lamentations has disproportionately focused on the figuration of Jerusalem as woman, and neglected to note the corresponding framework of royal masculinity that underlies the selection of feminizing images and tropes in the work. In making this argument, I also suggest that the lament genre is best understood as an indictment of failure and identification of discontinuity. Once we reframe the genre in this way, it becomes clear that Lamentations draws on, if only to invert, the framework of ancient Near Eastern royal achievement narratives, in order to diagnose Yahweh's actions as failing to meet the standards of royal masculinity. I thereby suggest that Lamentations stands as an antiachievement narrative of royal, male, power.

The story “Kitzur Toldot Michal” (A Bridged History of Michal) by Dahlia Ravikovitch is a biography of the author's mother - Michal. Both life stories – that of the author and that of her mother -are interwoven, and the portraits of the two are reflected in each other like a mirror image. This is a biographical story with two main characters, which crumbles the possibility of drawing a human portrait and a linear life story. It is an autobiographical story hidden behind a biographical tale of the author's mother.
The article focuses on the techniques that characterize the story and that break down the rules of the biographical and autobiographical genres: the fusion between the two biographical genres and the mixing between them and fictional genres, splitting the main character between different identities as well as the merging of other characters; A narrative that is based on repetition and circularity, and allusions, which interfere with the construction of the chronological-developmental sequence customary in life stories.
The article examines how the dissolution of the subjective identity and the dissolution of the narrative in the work nevertheless draw a complex portrait of the author and her life story, despite the deviation from the principles of the genre or rather because of it. The theoretical framework for the analysis is found in the work of Paul de Man, who defined autobiography as writing that inevitably hides in other genres and as places a  bridge between life and death, as writing on tombstones. It is expected to see Ravikovitch’s short stories as lower-quality literature than her poems. However, this article points out that the stories were written with the same poetic building blocks Ravikovitch used for her poems. Understanding them is necessary to build Rabikowitz's poetic lexicon as a complex system of intertextual and intratextual allusions. Out of this self-referential poetic space grows the figure of the poet and the story of her life as a kind of riddle whose solution is elusive.

This thesis surveys the degree to which the precedent literature describes and defines viable criteria for detecting chiastic structures in the biblical corpus. Although criteria for detecting chiasmus have been proposed, there seems to be a hesitancy toward employing them. The results from hermeneutical textbooks and biblical commentaries reveal the relative lack of emphasis given to chiasmus compared to other rhetorical devices. The thesis further demonstrates that rhetorical analysis often leads to satisfactory explanations for supposed inconsistencies in a text, such as repetitions, which are used as arguments against traditional authorship of biblical books, and that the critical schools of textual and form criticism have heavily influenced biblical scholars. Subsequently, attempting to rectify the situation, the thesis develops a seven-step hermeneutical method based on commonly agreed-upon criteria for detecting chiastic structures in biblical texts. The approach is then applied in the exegesis of a biblical text to demonstrate its efficacy. The study concludes that biblical studies can benefit from teaching chiasmus to future exegetes and that by failing to do so, one risks undermining the hermeneutical process, and with it the proper interpretation of the biblical text.