You choose

אֵיכָה echah - - alas!

For the lament from Lamentations 1 (lament-ations, get it?) that I commented on yesterday, the lectionary offers us an option for our response. One, from another Lamentations poem and chapter, is sad but faithful and hopeful that the Lord will bring the Exile mercifully to an end.

The other, Psalm 137, is bitter and vengeful, even though the prophecy and theology of Jerusalem's destruction and her population being carried away in captivity into the Babylonian Exile is that it is God's punishment for their cultic and sociological sins; and, in God's eyes and the words of the prophets, foreseeable and justified. 

See which option you prefer ->


Lamentations 3:19-26

The thought of my affliction and my homelessness
is wormwood and gall!
My soul continually thinks of it
and is bowed down within me.
But this I call to mind,
and therefore I have hope:
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
"The Lord is my portion," says my soul,
"therefore I will hope in him."
The Lord is good to those who wait for him,
to the soul that seeks him.
It is good that one should wait quietly
for the salvation of the Lord.

or

Psalm 137

1 By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept, *
when we remembered you, O Zion.
2 As for our harps, we hung them up *
on the trees in the midst of that land.
3 For those who led us away captive asked us for a song,
and our oppressors called for mirth: *
"Sing us one of the songs of Zion."
4 How shall we sing the Lord'S song *
upon an alien soil.
5 If I forget you, O Jerusalem, *
let my right hand forget its skill.
6 Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth
if I do not remember you, *
if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy.
7 Remember the day of Jerusalem, O Lord,
against the people of Edom, *
who said, "Down with it! down with it!
even to the ground!"
8 O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, *
happy the one who pays you back
for what you have done to us!
9 Happy shall he be who takes your little ones, *
and dashes them against the rock!