How Deserted Lies the City

Lamentations is a funeral poem for a destroyed city. It opens: 'How deserted lies the city, once so full of people! How like a widow is she, who once was great among the nations! She who was queen among the provinces has now become a slave.' Jerusalem has been burned to the ground by Babylon. The Temple is ash. The royal family is dead or captive. 'Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look around and see. Is any suffering like my suffering that was inflicted on me?' Each of the five chapters is an acrostic in the original Hebrew — every verse beginning with the next letter of the alphabet. Grief organized into perfect form.