Author Description

Book of Lamentations features some of the most haunting poetry in the bible. It is a traditional "city lament" mourning the desertion of the city its god, its destruction, and the ultimate return of the divinity, and partly a funeral dirge in which the bereaved bewails and addresses the dead. Lamentations consists of five distinct poems, corresponding to its five chapters. Authorship has traditionally been ascribed to Jeremiah but one clue that there may be multiple authors is that the gender and situation of the first-person witness changes: the narration is feminine in the first and second lamentation, and masculine in the third, while the fourth and fifth are eyewitness reports of Jerusalem's destruction. The poems probably originated from Judeans who remained in the land, although scholars are divided over whether they are the work of one or multiple authors. Included in this anthology are five different versions and the Matthew Henry commentary: The King James Version Douay-Rheims Version The American Standard Version Bible in Basic English Version Webster Bible Version The Matthew Henry analysis