Threni und Unheilsprophetie – eine Verhältnisbestimmung

The five chapters of the Book of Lamentations reflect on the conquest and destruction of Jerusalem by the Neobabylonians in the years 598/7 - 587/6 BCE. They apply several different strategies to handle the challenges of this event. This article focuses on one of these strategies: the explanation of the catastrophe as a deserved divine punishment. The explanatory
interjections are strikingly isolated in the text and even contradict their respective contexts. The design of the poems as acrostics, however, forbids a diachronic solution to this problem. The article therefore attempts a socio-historical solution to the findings: The reason lies in the non-harmonious relationship between the authors of the oldest lamentations (Thr 2 and 4) and late-monarchic prophets of doom.