Book of Lamentations

FOR THE FORMATTED VERSION WITH KENTRIDGE'S DRAWINGS GO TO: https://eternaltiber.net/triumphs-and-laments-research/

This is a guide to the iconography of William Kentridge’s Triumphs & Laments, the 500-meter-long frieze of colossal figures traced into the black accretions on the Tiber Embankments between Ponte Sisto and Ponte Mazzini in Rome in early Spring 2016:  http://www.tevereterno.it/arts/triumphs-and-laments/. The guide was compiled at the request of Kristin Jones, artistic director of the project, and was initially part of a Guidebook cell phone app, which has since been discontinued.

Prior to compiling the guide texts, with generous help from dozens of colleagues and students, I had the immense pleasure of serving as Curator of Historical Research for Triumphs & Laments, overseeing the research group at John Cabot University which formulated the chronological database ('timeline') of images from the history of art, cinema, and journalism provided to William Kentridge to inspire his drawings for the frieze. Our research continued and augmented that of Andrea Biagioni and Sara Spizzichino of Tevereterno.

Please share these texts with friends, colleagues, and students. Writing the guide was our labor of love for Rome, for William Kentridge and his work, and for the joy of collective creativity that made Triumphs & Laments a reality.

NOTE: In the pdf version available online before May 20, 2017, the hyperlinks were inoperative. In the current Word document, they work.

THE FIRST FOUR POEMS of the Book of Lamentations are in the form of alphabetical acrostics. 1 Each poem has twenty-two verses: in chaps. 1, 2, and 3 there are three lines in each stanza; in chap. 4, two lines; and in chap. 5, one line. In Lamentations 1, 2, and 4, only the first letter of the first line in each stanza is part I would like to acknowledge the kind support of Beit-Shalom, Japan. 1 In Lamentations 1 the alphabetic order is the one known today, but in chaps. 2-4 the letter pe precedes ayin. For a review of explanations of the reversed order, see Hermann Wiesmann, Die Klagelieder übersetzt und erklärt (Frankfurt am Main: Philosophische-theologische Hochschule Sankt Georgen, 1954) 32-33. According to Homer Heater ("Structure and Meaning in Lamentations," BSac 149 [1992] 304-15, esp. 314-15), the reversal of the sixteenth and seventeenth letters is a poetic device that is part of the motif of reversal, which is a dominant theme in Lamentations. In my opinion, the most reasonable explanation is that the order of the letters pe and ayin was not fixed at the time or, alternatively, that there were two traditions of alphabetic order. This fact is supported by inscriptions found at vIzbet Si art iah and Kuntillet vAjrud. See Aaron Demsky, "A Proto-Canaanite Abecedary Dating from the Period of the Judges" (in Hebrew), Bar-Ilan 14-15 (1977) 45-57 (English summary, 113-14); Moshe Kochavi and Aaron Demsky, "A Proto-Canaanite Abecedary from vIzbet-Sarta" (in Hebrew), Qadmoniot 9 (1978) 61-67; Frank Moore Cross, "Newly Found Inscriptions in Old Canaanite and Early Phoenician Scripts," BASOR 238 (1980) 13; Ze'ev Meshel, Kuntillet vAjrud-A Religious Centre from the Time of the Judaean Monarchy on the Border of Sinai (Israel Museum Catalogue 175; Jerusalem: Israel Museum, 1978). Some have explained the evidence from vIzbet-Sarta differently; see Aaron Dotan, "The Alphabet Inscription of vIzbet-Sarta" (in Hebrew), ErIsr 16 (1982) 62-69 (English summary 253*-254*); Joseph Naveh, "Some Considerations on the Ostracon from vIzbet-Sarta," IEJ 28 (1978) 31-35. Indeed, the possibility that in early times pe preceded ayin can be supported by further evidence. This is the alphabetic order in the LXX of Prov 31:10-31. Some scholars believe that vv. 15 and 16 should be reversed, yielding the order pe ayin. See, e.g., Artur Weiser, The Psalms: A Commentary (trans. Herbert Hartwell; OTL; London: SCM, 1962) 299 n. 1. Interestingly, in the Qumran text (4QLam) of Lamentations 1 the order is pe ayin, see DJD 16:234.

This article will claim that biblical lament expressed in corporate worship is uniquely fitted to provide therapeutic benefit for trauma victims. First, the pervasiveness of traumatic experience will be explored and established. Second, the contemporary church’s neglect of lament will be explored and established. Third, the Lament Psalms and the book of Lamentations will be explored and examined with attention given to contents, structures, and backgrounds that confirm these texts as the “biblical language of trauma.” Fourth and finally, the therapeutic benefits of lament will be examined in the light of trauma recovery theory and pastoral theology. The terms victim and survivor will be used interchangeably since each term represents an aspect of traumatic experience. (Individuals are wounded, shaken, and disoriented – victimized; but in the waves of aftermath, existence often becomes survival.)
Originally published in Cultural Encounters, Volume 11, Number 1, Winter 2015, pp. 50-68.

This essay is a compilation of research concerning Hebrew lament as a part of Jewish history. Written for a Christian audience, it seeks to define lament within a Hebrew context, explore lament via study of the Hebrew Bible, and attempt to understand a Jewish theology which incorporates suffering. This study pursues the value of understanding and possibly utilizing lament on the part of Christians who wish to understand their own religion in light of their Jewish heritage.

In a diary entry from 1916 entitled "Über Klage und Klagelied" (On lament and dirge), originally written as a prologue to his translation of a collection of biblical lamentations, Gershom Scholem proposes a geographical metaphor to describe what he calls "all language." The metaphor depicts two lands separated by a border: one land signi es the language of revelation, the other the language of silence; the border between them stands for what Scholem denotes as the language of lament (Klage). This article o fers a close reading of this enigmatic text in an attempt to interpret Scholem's early linguistic theory of lament and its relation to revelation and silence. In order to illuminate Scholem's insights, I turn to Benjamin's early fragment on lament (1916) and to his correspondence with Scholem on the relationship of lament to Jewish thought (1918), as well as to Werner Hamacher's remarks on the linguistic form of lament. I argue that both Scholem and Benjamin portray lament as "a language of the border," emphasizing its singular capacity to mark the boundaries of language and its expressive limits, while pointing to the possibility of lament to manifest a purely linguistic expression, devoid of any propositional, communicative, or subjective content. In his ambitious attempts to formulate a "metaphysics of language," Scholem demonstrates the productivity of the intersection between the theological and philosophical, the linguistic and the metaphysical, in early twentieth-century continental philosophy.

In the past there have been various attempts to articulate the theology of the book of Lamentations, 1 but none has so far been completely successful. In fact, two recent commentators have even questioned whether Lamentations 'has an overall distinctive theology'. 2 In this essay I contend that Lamentations does indeed have a distinctive theology and suggest that it is made manifest through the book's tragic vision. That is, the key to unlocking the theological relevance of Lamentations lies in recognizing and appreciating the book's genuinely tragic dimensions.

Weeping is a powerful non-verbal behavior by which people signal their pain and distress, and communicate a need for comfort and assistance. The book of Lamentations verbalizes the phenomenon of weeping to describe the tears of ‘daughter Zion’ and the empathetic tears of the narrator who addresses her in chap. 2. Thus, the eloquence and power of the poetry is augmented by verbal descriptions of a non-verbal behavior. In Lamentations 1–2, the motif of weeping is inextricably bound up with the personification of Zion as both a daughter and as the mother of the people. This article examines the personification of Jerusalem and its functions within the poetry in order to understand the expression ‘daughter Zion’ and how ‘daughter Zion’ heightens the emotional impact of the poetry and becomes a source of comfort in the midst of deep despair. As a daughter, Zion stands in solidarity with the suffering children of Lamentations, and as the mother of the community, she intercedes on their behalf and weeps for her suffering and missing children. All the instances of weeping occur with reference to the death of children.

This article deals with the prayer Ashurbanipal prayed to Marduk before returning his statue to Babylon, as recounted in his inscription labeled L4. This is the second of four cases in the corpus of Assyrian royal inscriptions, in which, in addition to the report that the king prayed, the prayer is given verbatim; the god is appealed to in the second person (the first case was used in an inscription of Esarhaddon). In answering the question as to the source of the version of the prayer that appears in the royal inscription, I examine its possible linkage to prayers outside of the context of the royal inscriptions, two ritual prayers as well as a historiograhpical one. All three prayers examined are bilingual, and show affinities to the kalûtu, the literary corpus of the lamentation priests. Putting Ashurbanipal's prayer in this context allows us to speculate that the prayer cited is an ex-generic lament prepared for the use of the king when he was to participate in a ritual concerning the relocation of a divine statue, and that the royal scribes used a (or, the) copy of this prayer while composing the L¬4 inscription.

The goal of this book is to present a revised edition of the Sumerian Lamentation over the Destruction of Ur, a lament bewailing the fall of the glorious Ur III kingdom in 2004 B.C.E.
Lamentation is a well-known genre in world literature. Laments of various types are part of the cultural legacy and literary corpus of many societies, from ancient to modern times, and Sumerian literature is no exception. However, Mesopotamian lamentation literature includes a significant body of laments belonging to a unique and almost unparalleled genre—the genre of lamentations over the destruction of cities and temples. This genre has no known ancient parallel outside the ancient Near East; more specifically, it is almost exclusively attested in Sumerian and biblical literature. The Lamentation over the Destruction of Ur is the most famous and important exemplar of the city-laments.
In this updated and revised publication of the Lamentation over the Destruction of Ur, Samet provides an introductory discussion of Sumerian city-laments in general; a full presentation of the text of the Ur Lament, including transliteration, translation, and an extensive philological commentary; and an accounting of the extant textual witness in score format. Plates with color photos of many texts are included.

Focusing on Lamentations 3, the “theological heart” of the book (O’Connor 2002), and the chapter with closest parallels to the book of Job, this paper will explore how the “voices” in Lamentations correspond to the characters in Job’s dialogue. The close connections between the two books, which have previously been surprisingly overlooked (Aitken 2013), invite this consideration of whether Job may be an early reception of Lamentations. Though some have addressed the close lexical links between the chapter and Job’s laments in chs. 16 and 19 (Lévêque 1970; Mettinger 1993; Aitken 2013), the resonance between the more positive “didactic voice” (Mandolfo 2007) in Lam 3:22-41 and Job’s friends has received less attention, though it is perhaps the “most Joblike” section of the chapter (Berlin 2002). More than that, the parallels between Job and these two sections of the chapter are not discrete, as they tend to be treated. Once they are recognized, they can no longer be considered the result of the clashing of traditions or mixing of genres in Lamentations. The personification of these voices and dramatization of their polyphonic engagement in Job suggests their interaction was part of Israelite reflection on suffering. Further, this technique corresponds with the use of the psalms in Job (Kynes 2012), which suggests the dramatic amplification of this dialogue from Lamentations was intentional. Considering the potential reception of Lamentations 3 in Job, therefore, affords an opportunity to compare how Job and the supplicant in Lamentations 3 make their complaints, how the friends and the “didactic voice” respond, and how the two books similarly employ the dialogue of multiple voices to respond to suffering.

Recent psychological research on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has demonstrated that one of the most common symptoms of the disorder is heightened or even uncontrollable anger.  In the past decade, various works in biblical studies have assessed the effects of trauma on the ancient Israelites and on the texts of the Hebrew Bible, but these have not fully explored either the connection between anger and PTSD or that between anger in the Hebrew Bible and Israelite trauma.  This article seeks to demonstrate the close relationship between trauma and rage and argues that biblical authors often locate their own traumatized rage in the figure of Yahweh.  The emotional response of Yahweh toward the Israelites is frequently presented as one of rage, blame, and contempt—a trio of socially distancing emotions.  This depiction of Yahweh results in a “theology of distance” wherein Yahweh’s furious emotionality negates the sympathy of audiences toward the traumatized Israelites.

Scholars debate the ethical relevance of the Old Testament. For evangelical Christians, the OT is part of the whole canon and its message is relevant to present times. In this paper, I study Genesis 22:1-19 as a test case to argue that Christian ethics is intrinsically related to the theological message of Scripture. I argue that Gen 22 is the trial of YHWH as much as the trial of Abraham. In the end, YHWH proves that he is not like other deities that demand child sacrifice. However, Gen 22 is a limited event and one needs to be careful not to​ emulate Abraham's actions. The major portrait of the Bible is that God is the life-giver. This ethical portrait is applicable to Asian contexts where human sacrifices are practices in some corners.

Scientists have developed a significant body of empirical research and theoretical constructs that can significantly inform the study of lament. Briefly stated, researchers find that people share their emotional experiences with others and that this sharing facilitates reformulating shattered beleif systems, engaging empathy, activating help, shaping common memories, and thereby restoring relationships. Lament may be understood as a form of emotional sharing for the purpose of recreating community. This sharing of emotions, however, does not have the "cathartic" effect normally attributed to it. In other words, the emotional burden of an experience is not alleviated by recollecting and narrating it. Even decades after a painful experience, sufferers recounting their experience typicaly reexperience the intense emotions involved with the memory. People communicate their emotional experiences not for the sake of any "catharsis," but for the benefits that acrue from emotional sharing. However, most scholars and laypersons continue to operate with a Freudian model of catharsis that has been discredited by a range of studies. As a result, the function and value of lament has been misunderstood.

Comprehension of the Old Testament in indigenous African Christianity can draw deeply on, confirm, and uphold tribal traditions designed to prevent death, calamity and infertility. Deep spirituality demonstrated in such comprehension contrasts with remnant spirituality in the West. Western people's awareness of their own religious underpinnings has lapsed. As a result, how well are Western Christians able to engage with holistic African communities? Holistic or integral mission can fall short through being a holistic means of introducing dualism. The legitimacy of science's intrusion on the Christian faith is questioned. Practical implications for the Western mission enterprise, such as the fact that it generates dependency, are drawn.

This is the second of a two-part study of enjambment in the poetry of Lamentations. The first part presented a basic taxonomy of the major kinds of enjambed lines found in Lamentations. 1 This part discusses some of the more notable rhythmical and semantic effects of this enjambing kind of line; the multiple ways in which enjambment combines with theme and the whole complex of prosodic features to deepen the feel and meaning of these poems.

Certain poetic features of Lamentations contribute to an ongoing preservative/cohesive function in faith communities. In form and content the reader/audience is confronted with completeness—a nation’s complete destruction, the complete range of human emotion—and with incompleteness—a fragmented people, broken institutions, unanswered theological questions.

This thesis is an examination of the exegetical intent and the translational methods employed in Targum Lamentations (TgLam). There are three primary steps involved in this study of TgLam. The first step involves a survey of the Book of Lamentations (as found in the Masoretic Text [MT]) in order to determine the basic text and meaning of the book which the targumist is interpreting. The second step is a detailed exegetical commentary of TgLam. This involves a verse by verse analysis of the targum with particular attention paid to the ways in which the targumist has departed from or transformed the biblical text. The final step is an analysis of the targum in order to determine how the targumist has modified the biblical text in order to convey or emphasize his message and address the questions of the date, provenance, and Sitz im Leben of TgLam.
From the very beginning TgLam presents the argument that Jerusalem was destroyed because Israel had disobeyed God. The people of Judah had transgressed God’s Commandments and refused to repent, therefore God decreed that the nations should enter Jerusalem and destroy the city and the Temple. The targumist used a variety of literary devices in order to convey this message. These include the use of aggadic additions and expansions that catalogue the sins of Israel. The first four verses of TgLam are particularly expansive and provide a theological framework within which the audience is to interpret Lamentations. The targumist has also followed the principle of ‰„Ó „‚ðÎ ‰„Ó and interpreted the nature of Israel’s punishment in light of their sin. Where the biblical text depicts graphic scenes such as cannibalism TgLam does not soften the image, but instead intensifies the language and thus increases the dramatic tension while warning the audience of the real, life-threatening dangers of transgressing God’s Commandments. TgLam in its present form was intended for use within the synagogue, presumably during the ninth of Ab service, and provided the congregation with an explanation of the destruction of the Temple. While placing the blame firmly upon the Congregation of Israel the targumist also exhorts his audience to repent and return to the LORD through the study of Mishnah and Torah.

The purpose of this article is to present the Lamentation for Holy Saturday by Juan Manuel de la Puente (1692-1753), chapelmaster at the Cathedral of Jaen from 1711 until his death. The piece owes several singularities. On the one hand, it constitutes one of the few works in Latin and is the only extant Lamentation setting by De la Puente, who was a prolific composer of cantatas and Christmas villancicos. On the other hand, its style and the fact that it was scored for five voices are unusual for the period and distance this work from the modern trends of his peers, who preferred composing either Lamentations for multiple voices on a grand scale or virtuoso Lamentations for solos or duos with instrumental accompaniment. After an analysis of its liturgical and musical features we offer a critical edition of De la Puente's Lamentation, to date unpublished.
El objetivo de este trabajo es dar a conocer la lamentación de Sábado Santo de Juan Manuel de la Puente (1692-1753), maestro de capilla de la Catedral de Jaén desde 1711 hasta su muerte. Esta composición presenta varias singularidades. Por un lado, constituye una de las escasas obras en latín y la única lamentación conservada del autor, de quien sí conocemos un notable número de cantatas y villancicos. Por otro, resulta particular su tratamiento estilístico y su plantilla a cinco voces, lo que aleja a esta pieza de las modernas tendencias seguidas por maestros contemporáneos, que prefirieron componer o bien lamentaciones policorales de gran formato o bien lamentaciones virtuosísticas a sólo o dúo con acompañamiento instrumental obligado. Tras abordar su análisis litúrgico y musical, presentamos una edición crítica de la obra, inédita hasta la fecha.

The book of Lamentations has been noted in biblical scholarship for its peculiar acrostic structure, a feature which makes the book unique in the OT in terms of style and literary unity. Taking inspiration from the possible meaning(s) of this structure, coupled with a detailed analysis of the central verses (vv. 22-24) of the middle poem (Lam 3), this author seeks to juxtapose the beacon of hope in the midst of lament for the destruction of Jerusalem with the experience of the Nigerian nation in the wake of religio-political terrorism and chronic system failure. God’s proofs of mercy (ḥeseḏ) and respect for law and (acrostic) order are put forward in the final analysis as divine and human panacea, just like faith and reason, in rekindling the light of hope for the nation.

This thesis argues for the presence of retributive theodicy in the book of Lamentations. This is done through a comparison with three ancient Near Eastern laments. In chapter one, the precedent for such a study is established through the presentation of three competing views of Lamentations (i.e., Lamentations as a work of liturgy, Lamentations as pure lament, and Lamentations as retributive theodicy). It is then demonstrated that much of the research on Lamentations focuses on similarities with ANE city-laments. It is proposed that a study that identifies and explores the differences between these texts might illumine helpful elements for discerning the meaning of the text of Lamentations.
In chapter two, the hermeneutical foundation of such a study is laid. In chapter three, the three most important Sumerian laments are exposited and similarities between these laments and the biblical Lamentations are demonstrated. This step proves further credibility to the present study by proving the claim of chapter two that these laments belong to the same genre. In chapter four, the differences between Lamentations and these three ANE city-laments are elucidated. The two literary differences (i.e., acrostic pattern and chiasm form) prove that the two theological differences (i.e., sin of the lamenter and the righteousness of divine aggressor) are both intentional and important to the overall message of the book. In chapter five, these two theological differences are further explored to discern their relationship to retributive theodicy. In this chapter, it is shown that Lamentations does contain elements of retributive theodicy which is based upon the covenant infidelity of Israel and the covenant fidelity of Yahweh.

Despite the absence of any formal attribution of the book of Lamentations to the prophet Jeremiah in the Hebrew Bible, the rabbis of the Talmudic period chose to perpetuate and reinforce this idea. The question explored is how this benefited them. Using Jorge Gracia's discussion of the "pseudo-historical author," the influence of the rabbinic assumption of Jeremiah's authorship of Lamentations on their exegesis of the book is explored. The rabbis were troubled by a number of theologically challenging verses and the claim of authorship opened the door to their use of the book of Jeremiah to explain away these difficulties.

L’idea di questo volume nasce con l’intenzione di onorare il prof.
Marco Nobile in occasione del suo 75° compleanno; un segno modesto
ma tangibile di stima e gratitudine da parte di colleghi e amici, in una
tappa che segna un traguardo importante della sua vita personale e della
sua carriera universitaria. L’abbondanza e la varietà dei contributi che
in questa raccolta vengono offerti – e che vorrebbero idealmente farsi
voce anche dei tanti studenti che sono stati alla sua scuola – appare come una testimonianza della qualità di relazioni che Marco Nobile ha saputo intessere negli anni.

The purpose of this study is to critique some of the prevalent theories regarding the biblical alphabetic acrostics and to expose a previously unrecognized feature that most of the acrostics share. " Alphabetical thinking " manifests itself differently in each poem; however, one common thread in most of the acrostics is the more prevalent use of the qatal form instead of the yiqtol form as compared to other poetry. This is likely a function of the versatility of the qatal to fit both the acrostic artifice and the acrostic style (aspectual orientation in particular). Two psalms, one acrostic and one non-acrostic, are analyzed and their verb usage compared. Three avenues of further study are proposed.

The wording of the Masoretic text (MT) version of Lam 4:3, as represented by Codex Leningradensis, exhibits a number of features that are interesting from the points of view of orthography, morphology and philology. These features have elicited different interpretations from scholars. It is also noteworthy that a non-biblical composition from Qumran, 4Q179, includes a phrase that has been borrowed from Lam 4:3. The interesting nature of MT Lam 4:3 and the use of a phrase from this verse in a Dead Sea scroll raise the question how other textual witnesses represent the wording and content of the verse. This study singles out the Greek translation of Lamentations (LXX Lam) for analysis and focuses on the renderings of ‫,תנין‬ "jackals", with δράκοντες, "dragons", and ‫עמי‬ ‫,בת‬ "the daughter of my people", with θυγατέρες λαοῦ μου, "daughters of my people". The analysis shows that the changes to the wording of Lam 4:3 introduced by the Greek translator had a marked effect on the content of the verse. LXX Lam 4:3 is therefore a unique representative of this verse's wording and content.

The Tenebrae Lessons were important components of Holy Week in Baroque France. While François Couperin's settings of the Tenebrae lessons hold a significant place in both the repertoire and scholarly literature, Marc-Antoine Charpentier's voluminous settings of the Tenebrae Lessons deserve a place alongside those by Couperin. This paper first outlines the liturgy of the Tenebrae service. Second, it examines the welcoming and influences of the Italian style on the French Leçons de Ténèbres at a time when Lully’s seizure over stage music was complete. Third, it illustrates the influence of secular music making on this important Liturgical Office. Fourth, it briefly discusses the importance of rhetoric for Charpentier and his contemporaries, and rhetoric's influence on the compositional style of liturgical music.

The margins of NA27 and NA28 note an allusion to Lam 2:15 in Matt 27:39, which describes the mocking of passersby during the crucifixion of Jesus. This paper assumes for the sake of argument that the allusion is valid and suggests a possible reason for it. It is proposed that that the reason for the allusion is to identify Jesus with the destroyed city of Jerusalem described in Lamentations. It is demonstrated that such an identification of an individual with a city is unobjectionable given the dynamic nature of OT symbolism.  It is argued that this identification suggests that the Gospel writers understand Jesus’ death on the cross to be a recapitulation or embodiment of Israel’s exile. This paper therefore corroborates and furthers some recent studies that have focused on the recapitulation of Israel in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

In the writings of the HB, hope appears to be an attitude in which human beings look forward and wait in expectation for the advent or arrival of what is considered to be future possibilities. This often involves a measure of uncertainty and/or tension between the present situation and the state or conditions that are hoped for. Furthermore, the acts and words of YHWH have a central place in the worldview in which the hopes are grounded. Lamentations 5:19-22 is an interesting example of such an attitude of hope in the HB. The Hebrew wording (as represented by the MT) is, however, not the only legitimate representative of the content of these verses. The Greek translation (LXX Lam) is another important witness to the text and content of Lam 5:19-22. The purpose of this study is to determine how LXX Lam presents the hope that is expressed in these verses and thereby to gain a better understanding of it as a representative of the content of Lamentations.

The personification of Jerusalem as female in Lamentations is often the entry point for interpretive engagements with the liook. Although Daughter Zion metaphorically represents the physical city, the figure is most often interpreted as a poetic means of portraying the suffering and distress of the human inhabitants of the city. Descriptions throughout are dominated by images of human suffering and degradation, and the struggle to come to terms with the trauma of military defeat and destruction. The book is, in its essence, anthropocentric. Does this mean, however, that these poems are limited only to an anthropocentric reading? Drawing on Bakhtinian dialogics, this paper explores the possibility of reading Lamentations 2 from another perspective. Taking its cue from Lamentations' opening image of the widowed city seated (on the earth?), the discussion explores the métonymie potential of reading the embodied language of the text as a site of engagement with the other-than-human world. Through an excess of seeing. Lamentations 2 is read alongside jer. 4:5-3ias a means of retrieving the voice of another (non-human Other) in the text.