LAMENTATIONS, BOOK OF

in| Hebrew canon, together with the Song | of Songs, Ruth, Ecclesiastes, and Esther, | forms Megilloth (Rolls). L, is made up of five separate poems, dealing wit e woes that have befallen the Hebrew nation by the taking of Jerusalem in 586. | The poems are beautiful, but are con-| scious art rather than spontaneous outpourings. i The author is not named, but early tradition to be found in the LxXX mekea him Jeremiah. The balance | of probability is thought by competent scholars to be against i Jeremiah’s iah’ autho re F ri ene oF his ship, disciples, but quite and po ibly dates 16 from is by a period one not long after him; it is po ibly not all by one writer.