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•LAMECH the strikerdown; the wild man. (1.) The fifth in descent from Cain. He was the first to violate the primeval ordinance of marriage (Genesis 4:18-24). His address to his two wives, Adah and Zillah (4:23, 24), is the only extant example of antediluvian poetry. It has been called “Lamech’s sword-song.” He was “rude and ruffianly,” fearing neither God nor man. With him the curtain falls on the race of Cain. We know nothing of his descendants.
(2.) The seventh in descent from Seth, being the only son of Methuselah. Noah was the oldest of his several sons (Genesis 5:25-31; Luke 3:36).
•LAMENTATION (Hebrews qinah), an elegy or dirge. The first example of this form of poetry is the lament of David over Saul and Jonathan (2 Samuel 1:17-27). It was a frequent accompaniment of mourning (Amos 8:10). In 2 Samuel 3:33, 34 is recorded David’s lament over Abner. Prophecy sometimes took the form of a lament when it predicted calamity (Ezekiel 27:2, 32; 28:12; 32:2, 16).
•LAMENTATIONS, BOOK OF called in the Hebrew canon ’Ekhah, meaning “How,” being the formula for the commencement of a song of wailing. It is the first word of the book (see 2 Samuel 1:19-27). The LXX. adopted the name rendered “Lamentations” (Gr. threnoi = Hebrews qinoth) now in common use, to denote the character of the book, in which the prophet mourns over the desolations brought on the city and the holy land by Chaldeans. In the Hebrew Bible it is placed among the Khethubim. (See BIBLE.)
As to its authorship, there is no room for hesitancy in following the LXX. and the Targum in ascribing it to Jeremiah. The spirit, tone, language, and subject-matter are in accord with the testimony of tradition in assigning it to him. According to tradition, he retired after the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar to a cavern outside the Damascus gate, where he wrote this book. That cavern is still pointed out. “In the face of a rocky hill, on the western side of the city, the local belief has placed ‘the grotto of Jeremiah.’ There, in that fixed attitude of grief which Michael Angelo has immortalized, the prophet may well be supposed to have mourned the fall of his country” (Stanley, Jewish Church).
The book consists of five separate poems. In chapter 1 the prophet dwells on the manifold miseries oppressed by which the city sits as a solitary widow weeping sorely. In chapter 2 these miseries are described in connection with the national sins that had caused them. Chapter 3 speaks of hope for the people of God. The chastisement would only be for their good; a better day would dawn for them. Chapter 4 laments the ruin and desolation that had come upon the city and temple, but traces it only to the people’s sins. Chapter 5 is a prayer that Zion’s reproach may be taken away in the repentance and recovery of the people.