Book

Lamentations איכה

The lament over ruined Jerusalem, read by candlelight on the night of the ninth of Av.

"How does the city sit alone, once full of people"—the book takes its name from that first word, eicha. Five chapters, four of them alphabetical acrostics, describe Jerusalem after the siege: hunger, mothers who have lost children, broken walls, captives, priests without service, elders sitting on the ground.

Tradition ascribes the book to Yirmeyahu, who warned for forty years and now mourns. Midrash connects eicha to God's question to Adam in Eden—ayeka, "where are you": the same letters, the same theme of a lost place.

There is no consolation in it except one verse at its centre: "the kindnesses of the Lord have not ceased… they are renewed every morning". By custom the reader does not end on the final harsh verse but returns to the one before: "return us to You and we shall return".

On the timeline

3336 · 425 BCEThe Siege of Jerusalem and the Breach of the Wall 3338 · 423 BCEThe Destruction of the First Temple, 9 Av 3338 3828 · 68 CEThe Destruction of the Second Temple 2449 · 1312 BCEThe Sin of the Spies and the Decree of the Ninth of Av

Jeremiah Jerusalem Tisha B'Av Exile and redemption The Temple Kinot

Sources

Tanakh

Eichah 1–5 — the five laments

Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar

Eichah Rabbah, petichta — the midrash’s prologues — the weeping of the heavens
Bava Batra 15a — Yirmiyahu wrote his own book and Eichah

Acharonim and later rabbinic literature

Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim 559 — how Eichah is read on the Ninth of Av

Basis: tradition.