A Final Lament and Appeal: Lamentation ends with a prayer asking God to remember the suffering of God’s city, Jerusalem, and his people. The prayer is one of the community as indicated by the consistent use of the first person plural pronoun. After the invocation in verse 1, the prayer continues with a long description of the suffering of a once proud and glorious place (vv. 2–18). It ends with a series of “why” questions (vv. 19–22), similar to the laments of the psalms (see Pss. 10:1, 13; 22: 1; 42:5, etc., and also Job’s lament in Job 3:11–26). It is significant that the book concludes not with resolution, but with an eye to the future. The lament calls on God to act to restore them.

Stylistically, chapter 5 is the only chapter that is not a true acrostic. Interestingly, though, the poet…