Feminine city

Chrisi Maier gave an interesting paper on the feminine conception of space in Lamentations. Jeremiah speaks of Jerusalem in turn as widow, as violated virgin, and as mother bereft of children. There is an intriguing asymmetry between these three images. The first two have an obvious literal referent: The city is violated because rapist enemy soldiers have broken through the walls, and the city’s children have really been deported. But the first image doesn’t have so obviously a “literal” referent: A literal referent would imply that, in some sense, the city’s husband Yahweh has died. When I asked Maier about this, she suggested that the point is that Jeremiah is describing the three main forms of feminine suffering, of feminine loss: of husband, virginity, children. But the text also raises the intriguing possibility that the destruction of the city is also, in some sense, the death of Yahweh – foreshadowing the NT’s linkage (in Mark, for instance) between the destruction of Jerusalem and the crucifixion of Yahweh incarnate.

Maier also noted a number of parallels between Lamentations 1-2 and Isaiah 40-55. Isaiah’s prophecy point by point reverses the suffering of Daughter Zion – she’ll have children, her husband will be restored, and she’ll be considered pure. Of course, Maier thinks that “Deutero-Isaiah” came later than Lamentation, but the intertextual connections are there. This may help to explain the strange unfinished quality of Lamentations: Jeremiah ends with Israel still in mourning, but he writes against the background of Isaiah’s promise that tears will be turned to joy.