Page "Book of Lamentations" Paragraph 21

The destruction of cities by foreign invaders, and its resulting catastrophic suffering, unfortunately, was very common in the ancient Near East and, therefore, we can observe examples of the lament form / genre concerning destroyed cities and temples from extra-biblical sources, particularly from early Sumerian Literature dating to the late third and early second millennia BC.

For example, from Sumerian Literature we can see the same Genre that we see in the Book of Lamentations of the Funeral Dirge and Lament reflected in the Sumerian Lament: Lamentation over the Destruction of Sumer and Ur which depicts the destruction of the cities of Sumer and Ur.

Yet, as Lemke and O ’ Connor point out, The Book of Lamentations, while adapting several traditional literary, historical, and cultural Near Eastern elements, is a unique literary composition, scripted to a specific historical situation, in response to an historical catastrophe, addressing the survivors of this catastrophe in a distinctive religious context.