There can hardly be any doubt as to the time to which these threnodies refer. A brief glance at the corresponding portions in the books of Kings and Chronicles demonstrates to evidence that they speak, one ancl all, of the whole period from the beginning of the last siege by Nebuchadnezzar to its terrible end. This has also, from the LXX. and the Midrash downwards, been the almost unanimous opinion of investigators (Carpzov, Eichhorn, Jahn, Bertholdt, Bormelius, Horrer, Riegler, Pareau, etc., etc.) It would seem to be equally clear that these poems belong, broadly speaking, to no parti cular phase of the great epoch of terrors, but that, written probably within a very brief space of time (more especially does this appear to be the case with the first four), they portray indiscriminately some woeful scene that presented itself at the head of every street,' or give way to a wild passionate outcry of terror, misery, despair, hope, prayer, revenge, as these in vehement succession swept over the poet's soul.
Yet it has been suggested (and the text has been strained to the utmost to prove it) that the succes sive elegies are the pictures of successive events portrayed in song ; that, in fact, the Lamenta tions are a descriptive threnody—a drama in which, scene after scene, the onward march of dread fate is described, intermixed with plaints, reflections, prayers, consolations, such as the chorus would utter in grave and measured rhythms, accompanied by the sighs and tears to which the spectators would be moved by the irredeemably doomed heroes and actors Thus, for instance, it has been maintained that the first chapter speaks of Jelioia chin's capture and exile (Horrer, Jahn, Riegler, etc.), upon which there is this to be observed, that a mere glance at Kings xxiv. shews that such scenes as are described in this first elegy (famine, slaughter of youths, etc.) do not in the least agree with the time and circumstances of Jehoiachin, while they do exactly correspond with the follow ing chapter of Kings, in which the reign under Zedekiah, with all its accompanying horrors, to the downfall of the city and empire, are related with the severe calmness of the historian, or rather the dry minuteness of the annalist. Neither can we, for our own part, see that 'gradual change in the state of the city' which De Wette sees in the con secutive chapters ; nor can we trace the gradual pro gress in the mind of the people—that is, in the first two chapters, heaviest, for ever inconsolable, grief ; in the third, the turning-point (the classical peri pay) ; in the fourth and fifth, the mind that gradu ally collects itself, and finally finds comfort in fervent prayer :—which is Ewald's ingenious sug gestion, to which Keil assents, as far as a general inner progress of the poems' goes. To our, and, we take it, to every unbiassed view, every one of the elegies is complete, as far as it goes, in itself, each treating the same, or almost the same, scenes and thoughts in ever new modes. In this respect
they might to a certain degree be likened to the In Memoriam' and the second movement of the Eroica'—the highest things to which vve can at all compare them in the varied realms of song. The general state of the nation, as wEll as of the poet, seem not much different from the first to the last, or, at all events, the fourth poem. It would certainly appear, moreover, as if, so far from form ing a consistent and progressive whole, consciously leading onward to harmony and supreme peace, they had not even been composed in the order in which they are before us now. Thus, e.g., the fourth chapter is certainly more akin to the second than to the third. Accident, more than a settled plan, must have placed them in their present order. But the history of this collection and redaction is one so obscure that we will not even venture on a new speculation on it.
And here it is necessary to notice a peculiar state ment of Jerome, which, though a crassus error' (Calvin), palpable at first sight, has yet found its stout defenders until very recently. We speak of his notion (ad Zach. xii. It) that this Book of La mentations on the destniction of Jerusalem by Nebu chadnezzar, was the lament which Jeremiah is said, in 2 Chron. xxxv., to have lamented on the death of Josiah, and which was sung by all the singing men and singing women in their rnrp or lamen tations, and which are written ntrpri 51,), among the Elegies, e., among the collection of national threnodies extant at the time of Chronicles. Jose phus relates, in his account of Josiah's death (An lig. x. 5. 1), in a similar manner, that Jeremiah composed brucOetov dueXos, a dirge' on the king's death, O Kat yexpc v0v Sialeivet, which is still extant.' What, indeed, is more natural than that Jeremiah, the Prophet of Wailings,' should have composed many mourning songs in the dark times in which his lot was cast, and that he should, more especially as a kind of laureate, have composed a dirge on the death of his king ? Nothing, indeed, but over-hastiness (though we are loth to charge the writer with it) could have caused Jerome so to mis understand either Josephus' ttexpL priv, and to over step, by an ill-advised addition of his own, the boundaries of the traditional illustmtion embodied in the Targum, ad loc. (` and as the lament over Josiah*'), to such a degree as to ia'entify a single dirg,e on the death of a king—who, be it well re membered, was buried in the sepulchres of his fathers with all regal honours--with our five elegies wailing over the terrors to which the conquered city is a prey, the fire and famine that rage in the streets, the sanctuary that is razed to the ground, the whole nation that is nearly destroyed, azza' the kzng who zIr in exile.