Old Testament · The Five Scrolls · World English Bible
Lamentations
"It is because of the LORD’s loving kindnesses that we are not consumed, because his mercies don’t fail. They are new every morning."
— Lamentations 3:22–23 
The Reading LensEvery verse pulled to the top of a book is chosen by three questions: Where is God’s heart here? Who is He protecting? Who is being saved by the action? It marks the place where those answers come into clearest focus — a “look at this, in this book.”
About the Book
Five poems over the ruin of Jerusalem. The Hebrew name is Eikah, “how” — the word the first, second and fourth poems open with. One of the Five Scrolls, read on the ninth of Av.
Four of the five are acrostics: each stanza begins with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet, aleph through tav. Chapter 3 triples it — three verses to each letter, sixty-six in all. Chapter 5 keeps the twenty-two-verse length but drops the pattern.
The form is the argument. The least controlled grief in the canon is set inside the most controlled structure available to it — and the one sustained passage of mercy sits at the centre of the centre, the midpoint of the tightest acrostic in the book.
5 Chapters
How Lonely Sits the City
The first acrostic. Jerusalem as a widow among the nations, her friends turned enemies, her roads in mourning because no one comes to the appointed feasts. Partway through, the city stops being described and begins to speak.
The Day of His Anger
The second acrostic, and the hardest to read. The destruction is attributed directly to God rather than to Babylon, verb after verb. Children faint in the streets, and the mothers are addressed directly.
Yet This I Call to Mind
The triple acrostic and the centre of the book. It opens “I am the man who has seen affliction,” runs sixty-six verses — and at its midpoint turns on the mercies that are new every morning, then turns back into the dark.
Gold Grown Dim
The fourth acrostic. The siege in detail — the children’s tongues cleaving to the roofs of their mouths, the hands of compassionate women — and the assessment that those killed by the sword fared better than those dying slowly of hunger.
Restore Us
Twenty-two verses, matching the alphabet, but no longer acrostic — the form finally gives out. A direct plea, and an ending the tradition softens in the reading but the text leaves standing as written.