Lamentations 5:1

Remember. This final poem in the book of Lamentations is a prayer for restoration. The conditions it portrays are apparently those of Judah and her people in the period after the fall of Jerusalem.

This poem forms a contrast to the poems of chs. 1-4 in several ways: it is not an acrostic, though it does have 22 verses, the same number as the letters of the Hebrew alphabet; and it is not written in the meter characteristic of the Hebrew lament (see p. 544). Nevertheless, this chapter has remarkable poetic qualities. Each verse consists of two parts, which are parallel, reiteration being a well-known device of Hebrew poetry (see Vol. Ill, pp. 23-28). The poet has also paid an unusual amount of attention to sound, which fact is remarkable, as rhyme and assonance are not generally characteristic of Hebrew poetry.