| Summary: | This dissertation interprets the poems of the book of Lamentations through the study of their imagery and of the themes expressed through that imagery. The introduction places the study in the context of literary studies of biblical texts and of recent scholarship on Lamentations. The book is read in its canonical order, identifying the images and patterns of imagery which occur in each poem. Major images are compared with similar images in other biblical poetry and interpreted as to the themes which they express. Comparison of imagery which appears in several poems illustrates how the experience of the fall of Jerusalem is variously understood and expressed within the book as a whole. The poems depict the suffering and losses of the community during the siege and its aftermath, while attempting to understand what these events mean for the community's relationship with its god. The speaker of Lam 3, however, reflects on human suffering from the perspective of an individual man. The poems and the book as a whole express vividly the experience of loss and suffering. The religious meaning of the disaster remains unanswered throughout the book, with the possible exception of the first chapter, where the balance of imagery of sin and suffering suggests that the sufferers receive what they have deserved for their sins. The book as a whole both expresses loss and suffering and inquires without final resolution as to the religious meaning of the communal disaster.
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