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Lee Levin · Monday, May 5, 2003
Not Just a River in Egypt:
The “Denial of Denial” in the Book of Lamentations
Out of the shifting kaleidoscope of voices and perspectives that constitutes Lamentations, no unifying theological message seems to emerge. It is no wonder, then, that traditional interpreters have by and large coaxed a single voice out this book by narrowing their focus to some subsection of it—generally, for example, fixing upon Lamentations’ lonely and tenuous voice of hope in chapter 3.[1] Just as salient as the plethora of contrasting and contradictory voices comprising Lamentations, however, is the palpable and conspicuous absence of one particular voice—that of God. The God of Lamentations is alternatively praised, accused, vilified, spoken of in the third person, and directly addressed, but in the this biblical saga, God is not given a speaking part.
This, of course, leads to the question: What sense can be discerned in Lamentations’ simultaneous surfeit and lack of voices? I would propose that one possible understanding of this aspect of Lamentations—that is, its cacophony of earthly speakers and perspectives and concurrent lack of a divine voice—is the view put forward by O’Connor, who suggests that this structure allows for a humanly search for the truth. As O’Connor writes, “Lamentations denies denial,” (O’Connor, 2002: 94). It allows the multifarious, confused, and conflicting thoughts of someone grappling with immense suffering to be given voice, without the interposition of a “deus ex machina,” in the form of divine discourse, to bring a tidy, authoritative resolution to the intractable problems dealt with in Lamentations. For the various speakers within Lamentations, God’s absence provides the “space” for their earnest search for meaning in the face of a calamity of incomprehensible dimensions. As O’Connor argues:
The biblical book of Lamentations refuses denial, practices truth-telling, and reverses amnesia. ... Because God’s voice is absent, it gives primacy to suffering voices like no other biblical book. ... For us, as for the speakers within Lamentations, divine speech exists only in reverberations, only in recollections of divine utterances long past.[2]
In the following paragraphs, I will discuss four related aspects or functions of the truthful search for meaning inherent in the kaleidoscopic flow of perspectives that comprise Lamentations. ...
Reconstruction of the Self through the Act of Speech
God’s absent voice, as suggested above, provides the space for the book’s wounded souls to find their voice and initiate a process of healing. “God’s silence in Lamentations,” declares O’Connor, “leaves wounds festering, open to the air and possibly to healing,” (O’Connor, 2002: 86). By shunning denial and attaching words to the truth of their agony, the voices of Lamentations provide a model for coping with suffering:
The first condition for healing is to bring the pain and suffering into view. ... [4] Our awareness of this is exacerbated by God’s “absent presence” within Lamentations. The characters of this book are Godless in a very real sense. The covenant theology which has informed their perceptions of the world, and which understands suffering to be the divinely ordained, just comeuppance for violations of the covenant, appears to dissolve before our eyes through the course of Lamentations. ... The acts of speech which comprise this book can be seen as the initial efforts to construct and locate oneself and one’s suffering within a new narrative framework. ... The book of Lamentations provides an example for us of wounded souls reconstituting themselves, their sense of personhood, and their ability to articulate their experience through the process of speech. ... …Lamentations retards and inverts this corrosion of language through a recovery of language itself and by giving voice to Jerusalem’s experience through a recovery of language itself and by giving voice to Jerusalem’s experience of suffering.
Approximate Word count = 3054
Approximate Pages = 12.2
(250 words per page double spaced)
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