Description

The Book of Lamentations is a collection of poetic laments for the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE In the Hebrew Bible it appears in the Ketuvim Writings as one of the Five Megillot or Five Scrolls alongside the Song of Songs Book of Ruth Ecclesiastes and the Book of Esther although there is no set order In the Christian Old Testament it follows the Book of Jeremiah as the prophet Jeremiah is its traditional author However according to modern scholarship while the destruction of Jerusalem by Babylon in 586/7 BCE forms the background to the poems they were probably not written by Jeremiah Most likely each of the books chapters was written by a different anonymous poet and they were then joined to form the book