(c) Images Courtesy of the Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library. Photo, Shai Halevi. www.deadseascrolls.org.il

The Book of Lamentations contains five poems mourning the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem’s First Temple in 586 BCE. Four manuscripts preserving portions of all five poems have been found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the scroll before you is the most extensive.

Though this manuscript begins with the opening words of Lamentations, the margin on the right side reveals an intriguing detail: Lamentations was not the first text written on this scroll. This represents a rare example of multiple biblical books joined together in a single scroll—a practice typically reserved for the Five Books of Moses and the collection of Twelve Minor Prophets. Which book preceded Lamentations on this scroll? The answer depends on your tradition. In the Hebrew Bible, the Book of Ruth comes before Lamentations, while Christian Bibles place the Book of Jeremiah in that position—a fitting arrangement, since the prophet Jeremiah has long been associated with authoring these mournful poems.

Detail Translation

1 ^{Lamentations 1:10}whom you commanded that they should not bring ¹¹her precious things as food to refresh her soul. LORD look and see
2 for I have become abject. ¹²Is all of this nothing to you that pass [by, look and se]e if there be any sorrow like
3 my sorrow which they brought upon me with which the L[ORD] has frightened me [in the da]y [of] his [ang]er. ¹³From on high has he sent fi[re]
4 into my bones and he has brought it down, he has spread a net for my feet, he has turned me [bac]k; he has made me desolate all
5 the day and faint. ¹⁴It was bound about my transgressions by his hand his yoke is secured upon [my] n[eck] he has made my strength fail. The
6 LORD has delivered me into the hand of him against whom I am not able to stand. ¹⁵The LORD has rejected my perished ones in my midst, he has
called an asse[mbly] against me
7 to crush my young men. The LORD has trodden as in a winepress the virgin daughters of Judah. ¹⁷ (*note vs. 16 follows 17 in this scroll) Zion spreads forth [her] h[ands; there is none]
8 to comfort her among all her lovers, you LORD are righteous the LORD has kept watch concerning Jacob that they are round about him should be his adversaries.
9 Zion has been banished among them.¹⁶For these things my eyes weep my tears flow down because [the comforter that should refresh the] soul is [far [from me].

[xxx] = restoration of missing text based on other versions of the same text or scholarly research

LORD = the Tetragrammaton, the four-letter name of God in the Hebrew Bible