1) This is not in many people's favorites list. The Provan commentary is good. I like Peterson in 5 Smooth Stones on the collection of poems. Tod Linafelt does good work in Surviving Lamentations and notes Patricia Tull's intertextual work from Remember the Former Things, the idea that we have inner dialogue in the pages of the Bible speaking across the years.

2) This is a public lament for a public loss. I felt cheated that President Bush was so poor in expressing our public grief after 9/11, as opposed to Prime Minister Blair.

3) It is an excellent introduction to praying private grief as lament. Lament is complaint converted into prayer.

4) It uses an acrostic (alphabetic) scheme. The sense should be that we reach an end point,as we go from A to Z. It also places a frame around one's grief. It gives a sense of getting a chance fully to express one's grief.

5) In the first verses notice the multitude of words for senses of grief and loss.

6) Patricia Tull (Willey) was the first person I remember saying that the no comfort of v. 2 is answered by God in Is. 40, comfort, comfort my people.

7) v.4 middle of distress (mesar has a sense of cramped, narrow), or no way out v. the openness of yasar, a salvation word connoting being out in the open in a broad, roomy place

8) v.6 is a great evocation of trouble as it draws form the natural world

 

Ch.3:19-25

1) for me the critical piece is also the center of the who book,v.21-23

2) How hard is it to wait when in trouble?

3) It is possible, given textual issues, that remember is asking god, or others, to remember, not I.

4) the steadfast love, hesed, is one of the major descriptions of the attributes of god in the OT. The issue is how we discern that love in trouble, especially if we see it at the hand of that loving God.

5)Provan sees the portion as a way of speaking that Israel dwells in God.

6) in Hebrew vv.25-27 all start with good.