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Bible - OT - Lamentations: Unclean Skirts

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Larry Lyke (I Will Espouse You Forever: The Song of Songs and the Theology of Love in the Hebrew Bible) notes the use of the word “skirts” (Heb. shwl) in Lamentations 1:9, and comments that outside Jeremiah, Nahum, and Lamentations the term “is always used in reference to clothing worn in the temple.” Isaiah 6:1 envisions Yahweh enthroned in temple garb, using the same word.

He suggests that “Jeremiah’s use may suggest that the term was heavily loaded with associations to the temple and vestments appropriate to it; its use became all the more shocking when associated with exposed nakedness. We cannot be sure that Jeremiah or Lamentations implies an association with the temple with this term, but its use in the latter . . . followed as it is by the invasion of the emple by unauthorized visitors, is highly suggestive indeed.”

The garments of Israel are the garments of the priests, and it’s the abominations of the priests that render the whole of Jerusalem unclean, the whole bride clothed in filthy skirts.

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, July 26, 2010 at 2:47 pm

Bible - OT - Lamentations: Breath of Israel

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Jeremiah describes invaders chasing Israel across the mountains of the land, pursuing them as swiftly as eagles (Lamentations 4:19). They can’t keep going; out of breath, they are ambushed and taken into exile.

Why are they breathless and weak? Because “the breath of our nostrils . . . was captured in their pits.” Who or what might that be? The parallel phrase in verse 20a tells us: “the breath (Heb., ruach) of our nostrils, Yahweh’s anointed.” That is, Judah’s king is Judah’s breath. Judah’s king is a new Adam sharing breath with Judah. Judah’s king encourages warriors who have exhausted their strength, fills the noses of Judah’s warriors with battle-rage, gives life and breath to His people.

All of Judah’s kings, every anointed one, communicated ruach to the people. That’s what kings do. And that’s what Jesus does.

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Saturday, January 16, 2010 at 4:48 pm

Bible - OT - Lamentations: Feminine city

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Chrisi Maier gave an interesting paper on the feminine conception of space in Lamentations. Jeremiah speaks of Jerusalem in turn as widow, as violated virgin, and as mother bereft of children. There is an intriguing asymmetry between these three images. The first two have an obvious literal referent: The city is violated because rapist enemy soldiers have broken through the walls, and the city’s children have really been deported. But the first image doesn’t have so obviously a “literal” referent: A literal referent would imply that, in some sense, the city’s husband Yahweh has died. When I asked Maier about this, she suggested that the point is that Jeremiah is describing the three main forms of feminine suffering, of feminine loss: of husband, virginity, children. But the text also raises the intriguing possibility that the destruction of the city is also, in some sense, the death of Yahweh – foreshadowing the NT’s linkage (in Mark, for instance) between the destruction of Jerusalem and the crucifixion of Yahweh incarnate.

Maier also noted a number of parallels between Lamentations 1-2 and Isaiah 40-55. Isaiah’s prophecy point by point reverses the suffering of Daughter Zion – she’ll have children, her husband will be restored, and she’ll be considered pure. Of course, Maier thinks that “Deutero-Isaiah” came later than Lamentation, but the intertextual connections are there. This may help to explain the strange unfinished quality of Lamentations: Jeremiah ends with Israel still in mourning, but he writes against the background of Isaiah’s promise that tears will be turned to joy.

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, November 21, 2006 at 7:10 am

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