Published
August 8, 2024
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August 8, 2024
[1] Unless otherwise indicated, biblical translations follow NRSVue, with modifications.
[2] As in the opening acrostic in Lamentations 1:1, 2:1, and 4:1, and in Isaiah 1:11 and Jeremiah 48:17. Also, in David’s lament for Jonathan and Saul, אֵיךְ נָפְלוּ גִבּוֹרִים, “How have the mighty fallen!” (2 Sam 1:19, 25, 27).
[3] The book of Lamentations (in Hebrew Eichah) is read on Tisha be’Av, the most mournful day of the Jewish year. In poetry and dramatic voice, it recounts the response to the siege on Jerusalem, the destruction of the First Temple, and the exile of the Judeans by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.E. See Elsie R. Stern, “Lamentations in Seasonal Context,” TheTorah (2016); and Elsie R. Stern, From Rebuke to Consolation: Exegesis and Theology in the Liturgical Anthology of the Ninth of Av Season, Brown Judaic Studies 338 (Providence, RI: Brown Judaic Studies, 2005).
[4] See Edward L. Greenstein, “Where Are God’s Tears in Lamentations?” TheTorah (2021).
[5] This howl, like the wailing in the desert, the empty wasteland where the jackals and ostriches howl (Deut 32:10, Rashi loc. cit.), conveys the boundary between sound and silence, when there are simply no words. See the discussion in Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, Genesis, the Beginning of Desire (Philadelphia: JPS, 1995), 130–133.
[6] 2 Kings 19:21; Psalm 9:15; Isaiah 1:8, 10:32, 16:1, 37:22, 52:2, 62:11; Jeremiah 4:31, 6:2, 23; Lamentations 1:6, 2:1, 4, 8, 10, 13, 18, and 4:2; Micah 1:13, 4:8, 10, 13; Zephaniah 3:14; and Zechariah 1:10, 2:14, 9:9. See also the synonymous expressions: הַר בַּת צִיּוֹן, “mount daughter Zion” (Isa 16:1, 10:32); בַּת יְרוּשָׁלִַם, “daughter Jerusalem” (2 Kgs 19:21; Isa 37:22; Lam 2:13, 15; Mic 4:8; Zeph 3:14, Zech 9:9); בַּת יְהוּדָה, “daughter Judah” (Lam 1:15 and 2:2, 5); and בְּתוּלַת, “maiden” or “virgin,” Israel/Jerusalem/Judah (2 Kgs 19:21, Jer 18:13, 31:4, 21; Lam 1:15; Amos 5:2). See Karla Bohmbach, “Daughter,” in Women in Scripture, ed. Carol Meyers (Boston and New York: Houghton-Mifflin Co. 2000), 517–519; Rachel Adelman, “Daughter Zion (Bat Tzion),” Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women. Adele Berlin reads Bat Tzion as a title and term of endearment: hence “Dear Zion.” See Adele Berlin, Lamentations: A Commentary, Old Testament Library (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002), 10–12, 42, 53. See also Mary L. Conway, “Daughter Zion: Metaphor and Dialogue in the Book of Lamentations,” in Daughter Zion: Her Portrait, Her Response, ed. M. J. Boda, C. J. Dempsey, and L. S. Flesher (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2012), 101–127; and Christi Maier, Daughter Zion, Mother Zion (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008).
[7] Berlin, Lamentations, 47.
[8] The great ethnographer and historian of the Cairo Geniza, Shelomo Dov Goitein, inspired by his observations of the traditional Yemenite community, identified a similar “professional role” for women in the Bible, such as the “dirge singers” or “lamenters”—the women “bewailing Tammuz” (Ezek 8:14), or the keeners/mourners in Jeremiah 9:16–19 (cf. Ezek 32:16, Jer 49:3)—and the women who lament/recount Jephthah’s daughter (Judg 11:40) See Shelomo Dov Goitein, “Women as Creators of Biblical Genres,” trans. Michael Carasik, Prooftexts 8, no. 1 (1988): 1–33; original in ‘lyyunim BaMiqra [Studies in Scripture] (Yavneh 1957), 250–303. See also Juliana Claassens, “Calling the Keeners: The Image of the Wailing Woman as Symbol of Survival in a Traumatized World,” JFSR 26.1 (2010): 63–77.
[9] Studies in ancient Near Eastern literature point to a city-lament genre in which the goddess decries the destruction of her city and its people. Whereas the goddess keens over her fallen city—Nippur, ancient Sumer, or Ur—in the book of Lamentations it is daughter Zion, the personified city herself, who voices the dirge and pleads the cause for her devastated and exiled people (Lam 1:9b, 11b–15a, 16, 18–22; 2:11–12). See Peggy Day, “The Personification of Cities as Female in the Hebrew Bible: The Thesis of Aloysius Fitzgerald, F.S.C.,” in Reading from this place. II. Social Location and Biblical Interpretation in Global Perspective, ed. Fernando F. Segovia and Mary Ann Tolbert (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1995), 283–302; F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, Weep O Daughter Zion: A Study of the City-Lament Genre in the Hebrew Bible, BibOr 44 (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1993). See also Berlin, Lamentations, 6–12, 50–53; Nili Samet, The Lamentation over the Destruction of Ur , MC 18 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2014), 1–31; Samet, “The Sumerian City Laments and the Book of Lamentations,” TheTorah (2015); and Cynthia R. Chapman, The Gendered Language of Warfare in the Israelite-Assyrian Encounter, Harvard Semitic Monographs 62 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2004).
[10] Cf. Isaiah 47:1, 5; Jeremiah 50:42, 51:33; and Zechariah 2:7.
[11] 2 Kings 19:20 adds שָׁמָֽעְתִּי, “I have heard” (i.e., Hezekiah’s prayer).
[12] The tossing of her head suggests contempt or scorn—but it is usually ascribed to the enemy (as in Pss 22:8, 109:25, and Lam 2:15).
[13] For a review of the relationship between 2 Kings 18–19 and Isaiah 36–39, see Joseph Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1–39, AB 19 (New York: Doubleday, 2000), 459–461; and Maier, Daughter Zion, 79–81, 240–241.
[14] The prophet Amos first draws upon the motif of the fallen maiden with regard to Israel in his lament for the northern kingdom, devastated in 722 B.C.E. by the Assyrians:
עמוס ה:ב נָפְלָה לֹא תוֹסִיף קוּם בְּתוּלַת יִשְׂרָאֵל נִטְּשָׁה עַל אַדְמָתָהּ אֵין מְקִימָהּ.
Amos 5:2 The Virgin Israel has fallen. She shall rise no more. She is forsaken on her land, with none to raise her up.
By contrast, in Jeremiah the northern tribes are assured sanctuary and revival in Judea, the southern kingdom (identified as Ephraim, YHWH’s “firstborn” “darling son” [31:8, 17, 19]; alt. “Rachel’s children” for whom she weeps as they are sent into exile [vv. 15–17]). See Marvin A. Sweeney, “For Whom Does Rachel Weep?” TheTorah (2016).
[15] A young woman’s bride-price would be based on her status as a virgin, so the father has a vested interest, not only socially but also financially, in protecting that status (cf. Exod 22:15–16, Deut 22:13–29). See Tikva Frymer-Kensky, “Virginity in the Bible,” in Gender and Law in the Hebrew Bible and the ancient Near East, ed. V. H. Matthews, B. M. Levinson, and T. Frymer-Kensky, JSOT Sup 262 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1998), 79–96.
[16] Jerusalem successfully spurns the foreign conquest. The prophecy goes on to predict Sennacherib’s downfall and the salvation of Zion as YHWH defends his own honor:
ישׁעיה לז:לה וְגַנּוֹתִי עַל הָעִיר הַזֹּאת לְהוֹשִׁיעָהּ לְמַעֲנִי וּלְמַעַן דָּוִד עַבְדִּי.
Isa 37:35 “For I [YHWH] will defend this city to save it, for my own sake and for the sake of my servant David.”
An angel of YHWH then goes out to strike down 185,000 in the Assyrian camp deployed outside Jerusalem, in a replay of the Egyptian plague of slaying the firstborn (Isa 37:26; 2 Kgs 19:35; cf. Exod 12).
[17] For further reading, see John H. Hayes, “The Tradition of Zion’s Inviolability,” JBL 82 (1963): 419–426. In 2 Samuel 7, the prophet Nathan promises King David that he would establish an eternal dynasty, that his son would build the Temple, and that YHWH would come to reside there, in the chosen capital, Jerusalem, “the city of David.” Though David could not build a house (i.e. Temple) for YHWH—deferred to his son, Solomon—YHWH would grant the king a “house” (that is, a dynasty) that would persist forever. (In 2 Samuel 7, the term bayit, lit. “house,” refers to palace [vv. 1–2]; to Temple [vv. 5–7, 13]; and to dynasty [vv. 11, 16, 19, 25, 26, 27, 29]). This seemingly unconditional “covenant of grant” (Weinfeld’s term) lies at the heart of Zion theology. See Moshe Weinfeld, “The Covenant of Grant in the Old Testament and in the Ancient Near East,” JAOS 90:2 (1970): 184–120. For Mount Zion as YHWH’s holy abode see Psalms 46, 48 and 76, as well as Isaiah 31:4. For further discussion of Zion theology, see Jon D. Levenson, Sinai and Zion (Minneapolis: Winston, 1985), 89–184. For a complex reading of the deferral of David’s proposal to build the Temple as foreshadowing the fall of the First Commonwealth, the destruction of Jerusalem, and the Babylonian exile, see Robert Polzin, “A House for a House,” in David and the Deuteronomist (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 54–87.
[18] See, e.g., Lamentations 1:6, 2:1, 4, 8, 10, 13 and 4:22. Lamentations is most likely a product of a community of Judeans who lived in the land (Berlin, Lamentations, 4).
[19] Gary A. Anderson, Time to Mourn, a Time to Dance: The Expression of Grief and Joy in Israelite Religion (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991); 84; quoted in Berlin, Lamentations, 48.
[20] Translation based on Berlin, Lamentations, 54. Editor’s note: On this verse, see Tzvi Novick, “Communicating Catastrophe,” TheTorah (2017).
[21] Just as YHWH, in Nathan’s oracle, promises to disciple King David’s son: אֲנִי אֶהְיֶה לּוֹ לְאָב וְהוּא יִהְיֶה לִּי לְבֵן, “I will be a father to him and he shall be my son…” (2 Sam 7:14). Likewise, Moses tells Israel: בָּנִים אַתֶּם לַי־הוָה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם, “You are the children of YHWH, your God” (Deut 14:1). As a father, the people or prophet call upon YHWH to have compassion on them. See Psalm 103:13; Isaiah 63:16 and 64:7; and Jeremiah 31:20, although arguably, the metaphor in Jeremiah is more maternal than paternal.
[22] Paraphrasing John Milton’s Paradise Lost. My definition is based on Zachary Braiterman, (God) After Auschwitz: Tradition and Change in Post-Holocaust Jewish Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1998). He defines the term “theodicy” (lit. “God’s justice”, theo-dike, coined by the German philosopher Leibniz), as “any attempt to justify, explain, or find acceptable meaning to the relationship that subsists between God (or some other form of ultimate reality), evil, and suffering” (p. 4). In contrast, “antitheodicy” means refusing to justify, explain, or accept that relationship” (p. 4). Ultimately, in lament and protest, “Daughter Zion talks back to the prophets” (Mandolfo’s words). See Carleen Mandolfo, Daughter Zion Talks Back to the Prophets: A Dialogic Theology of the Book of Lamentations (Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007). Mandolfo, however, focuses on how Bat Tzion in Lamentations challenges the wife-husband motif, yet overlooks the father-daughter paradigm. The term Bat Tzion is not used, for the most part, in the extended allegories about Israel/Judea as the adulterous wife (Hos 1–3; Jer 3; Ezek 16, 23).
[23] Translation adapted from Berlin, Lamentations, 65.
[24] Berlin, Lamentations, 48.
[25] We might compare this metaphor to Sennacherib’s reference to Hezekiah shut up in the city “like a bird in a cage” (ANET, 288); quoted in Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1–39, 184.
[26] The chapter also borrows extensively from Deuteronomistic language, especially “the Song of Moses” (Deut 32) (Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1–39, 175–176). Editor’s note: Arguing instead that much of Isaiah 1 is pre-exilic, but it has been reworked by a post-exilic editor, see Ethan Schwartz, “Isaiah’s Warning: Piety without Justice Leads to the Fall of Jerusalem,” TheTorah (2024). Isaiah 1 is read on the Sabbath just before Tisha be’Av, known as Shabbat Ḥazon, after the opening words: “The vision of Isaiah son of Amoz…” (v. 1), the last of the “three weeks of calamity,” from the 17th of Tammuz to the 9th of Av.
[27] The term zonah does not refer to a professional prostitute, but rather to a woman who has sexual relations outside of the sanction of marriage: “fornication” in antiquated terms. Thus, Dinah’s brothers are concerned that Dinah is seen הַכְזוֹנָה, “as a whor*” (Gen 34:31); Tamar (pregnant) is accused of זְנוּנִים, “harlotry” (Gen 38:24); and a young woman, proved to not be a virgin upon marriage, is stoned to death because she has לִזְנ֖וֹת בֵּ֣ית אָבִ֑יהָ, “played the harlot in her father’s house” (Deut 22:21). See Phyllis Bird, “’’To Play the Harlot’: An inquiry into an Old Testament Metaphor,” in Gender and Difference in Ancient Israel, ed, Peggy Day (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989), 75–94.
[28] She is then devastated and shamed, abandoned for her harlotry in this dramatization of Israel’s betrayal of YHWH. See, e.g., Jeremiah 3; Ezekiel 16, 23; Hosea 1–3. For a discussion of the problematic nature of this misogynist motif, see Renita J. Weems, Battered Love: Marriage Sex, and Violence in the Hebrew Prophets (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997); Gerlinde Baumann, Love and Violence: Marriage as Metaphor for the Relationship between YHWH and Israel in the Prophetic Books (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press 2003); Sharon Moughtin-Mumby, Sexual and Marital Metaphors in Hosea, Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Ezekiel, Oxford Theological Monographs (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); and Amy Kalmanofsky, Dangerous Sisters in the Hebrew Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress Press 2014), 53–68.
[29] In prophetic literature, metaphorical harlotry, as in “intercourse with other deities,” was sometimes thought to entail ritual fornication (as in Exod 34:15–16, Deut 31:16, Jer 2:20, Ezek 16:34, 41, and so forth). See the discussion in Tikva Frymer-Kensky, In the Wake of the Goddesses (New York: Fawcett Columbine 1992), 29, 201.
[30] The Rabbis had already observed that Isaiah’s prophecies offered an anti-dote to Jeremiah’s doom tolls. The latter prophet, according to tradition, followed the former chronologically:
איכה רבה א וְכֵן אַתְּ מוֹצֵא שֶׁכָּל נְבוּאוֹת קָשׁוֹת שֶׁנִּתְנַבֵּא יִרְמְיָה עַל יִשְׂרָאֵל הִקְדִּים יְשַׁעְיָה וְרִפְּאָן
Lam Rab 1:23 So you find for all the harsh prophecies that Jeremiah prophesied regarding Israel, Isaiah anticipated (them) and offered healing.
Based on the printed edition (Vilna 1878); cf. Lamentations Rabbah 1:21 and 1:26, Midrash Aggadah (ed. Buber) Deuteronomy 1:1, 12. Modern scholars, however, fully aware of the post-exilic setting for Second Isaiah argue that these later prophecies are a direct response and inversion of the earlier harsh prophecies and lament. See Tod Linafelt, Surviving Lamentations: Catastrophe, Lament and Protest in the Afterlife of a Biblical Book (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 62–79; Patricia Tull Willey, Remember the Former Things: The Recollection of Previous Texts in Second Isaiah (SBL Dissertation Series 161; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997), 125–132; 188–193; 229–245; Benjamin Sommer, A Prophet Reads Scripture: Allusion in Isaiah 40–66 (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998), 127–131; and Carol Newsom, “Response to Norman K. Gottwald ‘Social Class and Ideology in Isaiah 40–55,’” in Ideological Criticism of Biblical Texts, eds. Tina Pippin and David Jobling, Semeia 59 (1992), 73–78.
[31] See Mark J. Boda, “The Daughter’s Joy,” in Daughter Zion: Her Portrait, Her Response, ed. M. J. Boda, C. J. Dempsey, and L. S. Flesher (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2012), 321–342. On the dating and composition of Second Isaiah, see Joseph Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 40–55, AB 19A (New York: Doubleday, 2002), 92–104; and Isaiah 56–66, AB 19B (New York: Doubleday, 2003), 42–66. Blenkinsopp points out that initially Bat Zion (“the woman Zion”) represents both the Jewish people and the physical, historical city of Jerusalem (chs. 40–48), but the focus shifts decisively from Jacob/Israel to Jerusalem/Zion as the Judean community falls back on its commitment to rebuild and repopulate the city (Isaiah 40–55, 360). All seven haftaroth of consolations (שבעה דנחמתא) are taken from Second Isaiah (chs. 40–63).
[32] For the verb נחם, see Isaiah 40:1 (x2), 49:13; 51:3, 12, 19; 52:9; 61:2; 66:13 (x3). See Martin Buber, “Leitwort Style in Pentateuch Narrative,” in Scripture and Translation, ed. Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig, trans. Lawrence Rosenwald with Everett Fox (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1994), 114–128.
[33] Linafelt notes the parallel between Isaiah 49 and Lamentations 1 in Surviving Lamentations, 72. See also Willey, Remember the Former Things, 189–190.
[34] Resonant with Zion’s plea: רְאֵה יְהוָה אֶת עָנְיִי, “See, YHWH, my suffering” (Lam 1:9).
[35] The pairing of these two verbs is actually quite rare. In addition to Isaiah 49:4 and Lamentations 5:20, see Proverbs 2:17, Job 5:20, and Isaiah 65:11. See the discussion in Willey, Remember the Former Things, 188–191; Linafelt, Surviving Lamentations, 74–79; Maeir, Daughter Zion, Mother Zion, 164–167.
[36] Almost all translations read an ellipsis into the verse, where “not” is dropped in the second phrase (following the LXX). But the masculine singular participle מֵרַחֵם (meraḥem) is not parallel to the feminine singular imperfect הֲתִשְׁכַּח (ha-tishkakh). An alternative reading suggests that the verb הֲתִשְׁכַּח, “forget” carries over into the second phrase and מֵרַחֵם represents the combination of the preposition מִן and noun רֶחֶם, , parallel to עוּלָהּ, “her suckling/nursing child,” and בֶּן בִּטְנָהּ, “child of her belly.” If so, then 49:14b could read: “(Would she forget) (one) of the womb, son of her belly?” This reading is not supported by the vocalization in the MT.
[37] As in the case of starvation, when women were supposedly compelled cannibalize their own children (Lam 2:20, 4:2–3, 10; mentioned in the curses of Lev 26:29, Deut 28:54–57; cf. 2 Kgs 6:26–30, Jer 19:9, and Ezek 5:10). Berlin argues that this motif is likely an exaggeration that does not correspond to reality (Lamentations, 75–76).
[38] For the verb רחם, see Isaiah 49:10, 13, 15; 54:8, 10; 55:7; 60:10. The verb רחם and the noun רֶחֶם probably derive from different roots, though they may have been conflated in Israelite imagination. See Mayer I. Gruber, “The Motherhood of God in Second Isaiah,” in The Motherhood of God and Other Studies, South Florida Studies in the History of Judaism 57 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992), 3–15.
[39] Cf. Zephaniah 3:14; Zechariah 2:14 [NRSV 2:10], 9:9.
[40] See Boda, “Daughter’s Joy,” 329.
[41] The image of the abandoned woman, taken back in love, resonates with Hosea’s prophecy against Israel, the northern kingdom (chs. 1–2) and Jeremiah’s question, “Can a woman who has whor*d with many lovers, return to her husband?” (3:1), an action that would be prohibited according to the law in Deuteronomy 24:1–5. However, in Hosea, the woman’s restoration only follows a period of severe abuse (2:4–15). Second Isaiah likewise alludes to a period of forced separation, but does not mention other lovers or liaisons before the reunion of husband and wife. See Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 40–55, 360; and Benjamin Sommer, A Prophet Reads Scripture: Allusion in Isaiah 40–66 (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998), 102–103. Furthermore, instead of characterizing her as faithless, Zion is portrayed as barren, abandoned, desolate, or rejected—like the barren matriarchs of Genesis, the abandoned married women or “grass widows” of the history, and the desolate daughter of David, Tamar. It is this critique, of not only the strictures of patriarchy but also YHWH’s ineluctable justice, that Bat Tzion and these female figures articulate.
[42] See Phyllis Trible, “Journey of a Metaphor,” in God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978), 31–59.
[43] On feminine divine imagery, see Gruber, “Motherhood of God in Second Isaiah”; and Hanne Løland, Silent or Salient Gender? The Interpretation of Gendered God-Language in the Hebrew Bible, Exemplified in Isaiah 42, 46 and 49, FAT II 32 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008).
[44] For a recent study, see Juliana M. Claassens, Mourner, Mother, Midwife: Reimagining God’s Delivering Presence in the Old Testament (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2012).
[45] As F.W. Dobbs-Allsopp suggests in Lamentations (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 2002), 53.
[1] Unless otherwise indicated, biblical translations follow NRSVue, with modifications.
[2] As in the opening acrostic in Lamentations 1:1, 2:1, and 4:1, and in Isaiah 1:11 and Jeremiah 48:17. Also, in David’s lament for Jonathan and Saul, אֵיךְ נָפְלוּ גִבּוֹרִים, “How have the mighty fallen!” (2 Sam 1:19, 25, 27).
[3] The book of Lamentations (in Hebrew Eichah) is read on Tisha be’Av, the most mournful day of the Jewish year. In poetry and dramatic voice, it recounts the response to the siege on Jerusalem, the destruction of the First Temple, and the exile of the Judeans by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.E. See Elsie R. Stern, “Lamentations in Seasonal Context,” TheTorah (2016); and Elsie R. Stern, From Rebuke to Consolation: Exegesis and Theology in the Liturgical Anthology of the Ninth of Av Season, Brown Judaic Studies 338 (Providence, RI: Brown Judaic Studies, 2005).
[4] See Edward L. Greenstein, “Where Are God’s Tears in Lamentations?” TheTorah (2021).
[5] This howl, like the wailing in the desert, the empty wasteland where the jackals and ostriches howl (Deut 32:10, Rashi loc. cit.), conveys the boundary between sound and silence, when there are simply no words. See the discussion in Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, Genesis, the Beginning of Desire (Philadelphia: JPS, 1995), 130–133.
[6] 2 Kings 19:21; Psalm 9:15; Isaiah 1:8, 10:32, 16:1, 37:22, 52:2, 62:11; Jeremiah 4:31, 6:2, 23; Lamentations 1:6, 2:1, 4, 8, 10, 13, 18, and 4:2; Micah 1:13, 4:8, 10, 13; Zephaniah 3:14; and Zechariah 1:10, 2:14, 9:9. See also the synonymous expressions: הַר בַּת צִיּוֹן, “mount daughter Zion” (Isa 16:1, 10:32); בַּת יְרוּשָׁלִַם, “daughter Jerusalem” (2 Kgs 19:21; Isa 37:22; Lam 2:13, 15; Mic 4:8; Zeph 3:14, Zech 9:9); בַּת יְהוּדָה, “daughter Judah” (Lam 1:15 and 2:2, 5); and בְּתוּלַת, “maiden” or “virgin,” Israel/Jerusalem/Judah (2 Kgs 19:21, Jer 18:13, 31:4, 21; Lam 1:15; Amos 5:2). See Karla Bohmbach, “Daughter,” in Women in Scripture, ed. Carol Meyers (Boston and New York: Houghton-Mifflin Co. 2000), 517–519; Rachel Adelman, “Daughter Zion (Bat Tzion),” Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women. Adele Berlin reads Bat Tzion as a title and term of endearment: hence “Dear Zion.” See Adele Berlin, Lamentations: A Commentary, Old Testament Library (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002), 10–12, 42, 53. See also Mary L. Conway, “Daughter Zion: Metaphor and Dialogue in the Book of Lamentations,” in Daughter Zion: Her Portrait, Her Response, ed. M. J. Boda, C. J. Dempsey, and L. S. Flesher (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2012), 101–127; and Christi Maier, Daughter Zion, Mother Zion (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008).
[7] Berlin, Lamentations, 47.
[8] The great ethnographer and historian of the Cairo Geniza, Shelomo Dov Goitein, inspired by his observations of the traditional Yemenite community, identified a similar “professional role” for women in the Bible, such as the “dirge singers” or “lamenters”—the women “bewailing Tammuz” (Ezek 8:14), or the keeners/mourners in Jeremiah 9:16–19 (cf. Ezek 32:16, Jer 49:3)—and the women who lament/recount Jephthah’s daughter (Judg 11:40) See Shelomo Dov Goitein, “Women as Creators of Biblical Genres,” trans. Michael Carasik, Prooftexts 8, no. 1 (1988): 1–33; original in ‘lyyunim BaMiqra [Studies in Scripture] (Yavneh 1957), 250–303. See also Juliana Claassens, “Calling the Keeners: The Image of the Wailing Woman as Symbol of Survival in a Traumatized World,” JFSR 26.1 (2010): 63–77.
[9] Studies in ancient Near Eastern literature point to a city-lament genre in which the goddess decries the destruction of her city and its people. Whereas the goddess keens over her fallen city—Nippur, ancient Sumer, or Ur—in the book of Lamentations it is daughter Zion, the personified city herself, who voices the dirge and pleads the cause for her devastated and exiled people (Lam 1:9b, 11b–15a, 16, 18–22; 2:11–12). See Peggy Day, “The Personification of Cities as Female in the Hebrew Bible: The Thesis of Aloysius Fitzgerald, F.S.C.,” in Reading from this place. II. Social Location and Biblical Interpretation in Global Perspective, ed. Fernando F. Segovia and Mary Ann Tolbert (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1995), 283–302; F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, Weep O Daughter Zion: A Study of the City-Lament Genre in the Hebrew Bible, BibOr 44 (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1993). See also Berlin, Lamentations, 6–12, 50–53; Nili Samet, The Lamentation over the Destruction of Ur , MC 18 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2014), 1–31; Samet, “The Sumerian City Laments and the Book of Lamentations,” TheTorah (2015); and Cynthia R. Chapman, The Gendered Language of Warfare in the Israelite-Assyrian Encounter, Harvard Semitic Monographs 62 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2004).
[10] Cf. Isaiah 47:1, 5; Jeremiah 50:42, 51:33; and Zechariah 2:7.
[11] 2 Kings 19:20 adds שָׁמָֽעְתִּי, “I have heard” (i.e., Hezekiah’s prayer).
[12] The tossing of her head suggests contempt or scorn—but it is usually ascribed to the enemy (as in Pss 22:8, 109:25, and Lam 2:15).
[13] For a review of the relationship between 2 Kings 18–19 and Isaiah 36–39, see Joseph Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1–39, AB 19 (New York: Doubleday, 2000), 459–461; and Maier, Daughter Zion, 79–81, 240–241.
[14] The prophet Amos first draws upon the motif of the fallen maiden with regard to Israel in his lament for the northern kingdom, devastated in 722 B.C.E. by the Assyrians:
עמוס ה:ב נָפְלָה לֹא תוֹסִיף קוּם בְּתוּלַת יִשְׂרָאֵל נִטְּשָׁה עַל אַדְמָתָהּ אֵין מְקִימָהּ.
Amos 5:2 The Virgin Israel has fallen. She shall rise no more. She is forsaken on her land, with none to raise her up.
By contrast, in Jeremiah the northern tribes are assured sanctuary and revival in Judea, the southern kingdom (identified as Ephraim, YHWH’s “firstborn” “darling son” [31:8, 17, 19]; alt. “Rachel’s children” for whom she weeps as they are sent into exile [vv. 15–17]). See Marvin A. Sweeney, “For Whom Does Rachel Weep?” TheTorah (2016).
[15] A young woman’s bride-price would be based on her status as a virgin, so the father has a vested interest, not only socially but also financially, in protecting that status (cf. Exod 22:15–16, Deut 22:13–29). See Tikva Frymer-Kensky, “Virginity in the Bible,” in Gender and Law in the Hebrew Bible and the ancient Near East, ed. V. H. Matthews, B. M. Levinson, and T. Frymer-Kensky, JSOT Sup 262 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1998), 79–96.
[16] Jerusalem successfully spurns the foreign conquest. The prophecy goes on to predict Sennacherib’s downfall and the salvation of Zion as YHWH defends his own honor:
ישׁעיה לז:לה וְגַנּוֹתִי עַל הָעִיר הַזֹּאת לְהוֹשִׁיעָהּ לְמַעֲנִי וּלְמַעַן דָּוִד עַבְדִּי.
Isa 37:35 “For I [YHWH] will defend this city to save it, for my own sake and for the sake of my servant David.”
An angel of YHWH then goes out to strike down 185,000 in the Assyrian camp deployed outside Jerusalem, in a replay of the Egyptian plague of slaying the firstborn (Isa 37:26; 2 Kgs 19:35; cf. Exod 12).
[17] For further reading, see John H. Hayes, “The Tradition of Zion’s Inviolability,” JBL 82 (1963): 419–426. In 2 Samuel 7, the prophet Nathan promises King David that he would establish an eternal dynasty, that his son would build the Temple, and that YHWH would come to reside there, in the chosen capital, Jerusalem, “the city of David.” Though David could not build a house (i.e. Temple) for YHWH—deferred to his son, Solomon—YHWH would grant the king a “house” (that is, a dynasty) that would persist forever. (In 2 Samuel 7, the term bayit, lit. “house,” refers to palace [vv. 1–2]; to Temple [vv. 5–7, 13]; and to dynasty [vv. 11, 16, 19, 25, 26, 27, 29]). This seemingly unconditional “covenant of grant” (Weinfeld’s term) lies at the heart of Zion theology. See Moshe Weinfeld, “The Covenant of Grant in the Old Testament and in the Ancient Near East,” JAOS 90:2 (1970): 184–120. For Mount Zion as YHWH’s holy abode see Psalms 46, 48 and 76, as well as Isaiah 31:4. For further discussion of Zion theology, see Jon D. Levenson, Sinai and Zion (Minneapolis: Winston, 1985), 89–184. For a complex reading of the deferral of David’s proposal to build the Temple as foreshadowing the fall of the First Commonwealth, the destruction of Jerusalem, and the Babylonian exile, see Robert Polzin, “A House for a House,” in David and the Deuteronomist (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 54–87.
[18] See, e.g., Lamentations 1:6, 2:1, 4, 8, 10, 13 and 4:22. Lamentations is most likely a product of a community of Judeans who lived in the land (Berlin, Lamentations, 4).
[19] Gary A. Anderson, Time to Mourn, a Time to Dance: The Expression of Grief and Joy in Israelite Religion (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991); 84; quoted in Berlin, Lamentations, 48.
[20] Translation based on Berlin, Lamentations, 54. Editor’s note: On this verse, see Tzvi Novick, “Communicating Catastrophe,” TheTorah (2017).
[21] Just as YHWH, in Nathan’s oracle, promises to disciple King David’s son: אֲנִי אֶהְיֶה לּוֹ לְאָב וְהוּא יִהְיֶה לִּי לְבֵן, “I will be a father to him and he shall be my son…” (2 Sam 7:14). Likewise, Moses tells Israel: בָּנִים אַתֶּם לַי־הוָה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם, “You are the children of YHWH, your God” (Deut 14:1). As a father, the people or prophet call upon YHWH to have compassion on them. See Psalm 103:13; Isaiah 63:16 and 64:7; and Jeremiah 31:20, although arguably, the metaphor in Jeremiah is more maternal than paternal.
[22] Paraphrasing John Milton’s Paradise Lost. My definition is based on Zachary Braiterman, (God) After Auschwitz: Tradition and Change in Post-Holocaust Jewish Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1998). He defines the term “theodicy” (lit. “God’s justice”, theo-dike, coined by the German philosopher Leibniz), as “any attempt to justify, explain, or find acceptable meaning to the relationship that subsists between God (or some other form of ultimate reality), evil, and suffering” (p. 4). In contrast, “antitheodicy” means refusing to justify, explain, or accept that relationship” (p. 4). Ultimately, in lament and protest, “Daughter Zion talks back to the prophets” (Mandolfo’s words). See Carleen Mandolfo, Daughter Zion Talks Back to the Prophets: A Dialogic Theology of the Book of Lamentations (Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007). Mandolfo, however, focuses on how Bat Tzion in Lamentations challenges the wife-husband motif, yet overlooks the father-daughter paradigm. The term Bat Tzion is not used, for the most part, in the extended allegories about Israel/Judea as the adulterous wife (Hos 1–3; Jer 3; Ezek 16, 23).
[23] Translation adapted from Berlin, Lamentations, 65.
[24] Berlin, Lamentations, 48.
[25] We might compare this metaphor to Sennacherib’s reference to Hezekiah shut up in the city “like a bird in a cage” (ANET, 288); quoted in Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1–39, 184.
[26] The chapter also borrows extensively from Deuteronomistic language, especially “the Song of Moses” (Deut 32) (Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1–39, 175–176). Editor’s note: Arguing instead that much of Isaiah 1 is pre-exilic, but it has been reworked by a post-exilic editor, see Ethan Schwartz, “Isaiah’s Warning: Piety without Justice Leads to the Fall of Jerusalem,” TheTorah (2024). Isaiah 1 is read on the Sabbath just before Tisha be’Av, known as Shabbat Ḥazon, after the opening words: “The vision of Isaiah son of Amoz…” (v. 1), the last of the “three weeks of calamity,” from the 17th of Tammuz to the 9th of Av.
[27] The term zonah does not refer to a professional prostitute, but rather to a woman who has sexual relations outside of the sanction of marriage: “fornication” in antiquated terms. Thus, Dinah’s brothers are concerned that Dinah is seen הַכְזוֹנָה, “as a whor*” (Gen 34:31); Tamar (pregnant) is accused of זְנוּנִים, “harlotry” (Gen 38:24); and a young woman, proved to not be a virgin upon marriage, is stoned to death because she has לִזְנ֖וֹת בֵּ֣ית אָבִ֑יהָ, “played the harlot in her father’s house” (Deut 22:21). See Phyllis Bird, “’’To Play the Harlot’: An inquiry into an Old Testament Metaphor,” in Gender and Difference in Ancient Israel, ed, Peggy Day (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989), 75–94.
[28] She is then devastated and shamed, abandoned for her harlotry in this dramatization of Israel’s betrayal of YHWH. See, e.g., Jeremiah 3; Ezekiel 16, 23; Hosea 1–3. For a discussion of the problematic nature of this misogynist motif, see Renita J. Weems, Battered Love: Marriage Sex, and Violence in the Hebrew Prophets (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997); Gerlinde Baumann, Love and Violence: Marriage as Metaphor for the Relationship between YHWH and Israel in the Prophetic Books (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press 2003); Sharon Moughtin-Mumby, Sexual and Marital Metaphors in Hosea, Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Ezekiel, Oxford Theological Monographs (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); and Amy Kalmanofsky, Dangerous Sisters in the Hebrew Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress Press 2014), 53–68.
[29] In prophetic literature, metaphorical harlotry, as in “intercourse with other deities,” was sometimes thought to entail ritual fornication (as in Exod 34:15–16, Deut 31:16, Jer 2:20, Ezek 16:34, 41, and so forth). See the discussion in Tikva Frymer-Kensky, In the Wake of the Goddesses (New York: Fawcett Columbine 1992), 29, 201.
[30] The Rabbis had already observed that Isaiah’s prophecies offered an anti-dote to Jeremiah’s doom tolls. The latter prophet, according to tradition, followed the former chronologically:
איכה רבה א וְכֵן אַתְּ מוֹצֵא שֶׁכָּל נְבוּאוֹת קָשׁוֹת שֶׁנִּתְנַבֵּא יִרְמְיָה עַל יִשְׂרָאֵל הִקְדִּים יְשַׁעְיָה וְרִפְּאָן
Lam Rab 1:23 So you find for all the harsh prophecies that Jeremiah prophesied regarding Israel, Isaiah anticipated (them) and offered healing.
Based on the printed edition (Vilna 1878); cf. Lamentations Rabbah 1:21 and 1:26, Midrash Aggadah (ed. Buber) Deuteronomy 1:1, 12. Modern scholars, however, fully aware of the post-exilic setting for Second Isaiah argue that these later prophecies are a direct response and inversion of the earlier harsh prophecies and lament. See Tod Linafelt, Surviving Lamentations: Catastrophe, Lament and Protest in the Afterlife of a Biblical Book (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 62–79; Patricia Tull Willey, Remember the Former Things: The Recollection of Previous Texts in Second Isaiah (SBL Dissertation Series 161; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997), 125–132; 188–193; 229–245; Benjamin Sommer, A Prophet Reads Scripture: Allusion in Isaiah 40–66 (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998), 127–131; and Carol Newsom, “Response to Norman K. Gottwald ‘Social Class and Ideology in Isaiah 40–55,’” in Ideological Criticism of Biblical Texts, eds. Tina Pippin and David Jobling, Semeia 59 (1992), 73–78.
[31] See Mark J. Boda, “The Daughter’s Joy,” in Daughter Zion: Her Portrait, Her Response, ed. M. J. Boda, C. J. Dempsey, and L. S. Flesher (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2012), 321–342. On the dating and composition of Second Isaiah, see Joseph Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 40–55, AB 19A (New York: Doubleday, 2002), 92–104; and Isaiah 56–66, AB 19B (New York: Doubleday, 2003), 42–66. Blenkinsopp points out that initially Bat Zion (“the woman Zion”) represents both the Jewish people and the physical, historical city of Jerusalem (chs. 40–48), but the focus shifts decisively from Jacob/Israel to Jerusalem/Zion as the Judean community falls back on its commitment to rebuild and repopulate the city (Isaiah 40–55, 360). All seven haftaroth of consolations (שבעה דנחמתא) are taken from Second Isaiah (chs. 40–63).
[32] For the verb נחם, see Isaiah 40:1 (x2), 49:13; 51:3, 12, 19; 52:9; 61:2; 66:13 (x3). See Martin Buber, “Leitwort Style in Pentateuch Narrative,” in Scripture and Translation, ed. Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig, trans. Lawrence Rosenwald with Everett Fox (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1994), 114–128.
[33] Linafelt notes the parallel between Isaiah 49 and Lamentations 1 in Surviving Lamentations, 72. See also Willey, Remember the Former Things, 189–190.
[34] Resonant with Zion’s plea: רְאֵה יְהוָה אֶת עָנְיִי, “See, YHWH, my suffering” (Lam 1:9).
[35] The pairing of these two verbs is actually quite rare. In addition to Isaiah 49:4 and Lamentations 5:20, see Proverbs 2:17, Job 5:20, and Isaiah 65:11. See the discussion in Willey, Remember the Former Things, 188–191; Linafelt, Surviving Lamentations, 74–79; Maeir, Daughter Zion, Mother Zion, 164–167.
[36] Almost all translations read an ellipsis into the verse, where “not” is dropped in the second phrase (following the LXX). But the masculine singular participle מֵרַחֵם (meraḥem) is not parallel to the feminine singular imperfect הֲתִשְׁכַּח (ha-tishkakh). An alternative reading suggests that the verb הֲתִשְׁכַּח, “forget” carries over into the second phrase and מֵרַחֵם represents the combination of the preposition מִן and noun רֶחֶם, , parallel to עוּלָהּ, “her suckling/nursing child,” and בֶּן בִּטְנָהּ, “child of her belly.” If so, then 49:14b could read: “(Would she forget) (one) of the womb, son of her belly?” This reading is not supported by the vocalization in the MT.
[37] As in the case of starvation, when women were supposedly compelled cannibalize their own children (Lam 2:20, 4:2–3, 10; mentioned in the curses of Lev 26:29, Deut 28:54–57; cf. 2 Kgs 6:26–30, Jer 19:9, and Ezek 5:10). Berlin argues that this motif is likely an exaggeration that does not correspond to reality (Lamentations, 75–76).
[38] For the verb רחם, see Isaiah 49:10, 13, 15; 54:8, 10; 55:7; 60:10. The verb רחם and the noun רֶחֶם probably derive from different roots, though they may have been conflated in Israelite imagination. See Mayer I. Gruber, “The Motherhood of God in Second Isaiah,” in The Motherhood of God and Other Studies, South Florida Studies in the History of Judaism 57 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992), 3–15.
[39] Cf. Zephaniah 3:14; Zechariah 2:14 [NRSV 2:10], 9:9.
[40] See Boda, “Daughter’s Joy,” 329.
[41] The image of the abandoned woman, taken back in love, resonates with Hosea’s prophecy against Israel, the northern kingdom (chs. 1–2) and Jeremiah’s question, “Can a woman who has whor*d with many lovers, return to her husband?” (3:1), an action that would be prohibited according to the law in Deuteronomy 24:1–5. However, in Hosea, the woman’s restoration only follows a period of severe abuse (2:4–15). Second Isaiah likewise alludes to a period of forced separation, but does not mention other lovers or liaisons before the reunion of husband and wife. See Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 40–55, 360; and Benjamin Sommer, A Prophet Reads Scripture: Allusion in Isaiah 40–66 (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998), 102–103. Furthermore, instead of characterizing her as faithless, Zion is portrayed as barren, abandoned, desolate, or rejected—like the barren matriarchs of Genesis, the abandoned married women or “grass widows” of the history, and the desolate daughter of David, Tamar. It is this critique, of not only the strictures of patriarchy but also YHWH’s ineluctable justice, that Bat Tzion and these female figures articulate.
[42] See Phyllis Trible, “Journey of a Metaphor,” in God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978), 31–59.
[43] On feminine divine imagery, see Gruber, “Motherhood of God in Second Isaiah”; and Hanne Løland, Silent or Salient Gender? The Interpretation of Gendered God-Language in the Hebrew Bible, Exemplified in Isaiah 42, 46 and 49, FAT II 32 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008).
[44] For a recent study, see Juliana M. Claassens, Mourner, Mother, Midwife: Reimagining God’s Delivering Presence in the Old Testament (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2012).
[45] As F.W. Dobbs-Allsopp suggests in Lamentations (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 2002), 53.
