The Song of Solomon : and the Lamentations of Jeremiah

66 THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMIAH
the march of death ; and yet it would be known that
this solemn pomp was not really a demonstration of
mourning or a symbol of respect, but only the pageantry
of scorn and hatred and vengeance. The sarcasm
would strike home with the more force since it fell on
m.en's ears in the heavy, lingering lines of the elegy,
as the exultant patriot exclaimed,
" How hath the oppressor ceased—the golden city ceased !
The Lord hath broken the staff of the wicked—the sceptre of the
rulers," etc'
A special characteristic of the five elegies that make
up the Book of Lamentations is their alphabetical ar-
rangement. Each elegy consists of twenty-two verses,
the same number as that of the letters in the Hebrew
alphabet. All but the last are acrostics, the initial
letter of each verse following the order of the alphabet.
In the third elegy every line in the verse begins
with the same letter. According to another way of
reckoning, this poem consists of sixty-six verses
arranged in triplets, each of which not only follows
the order of the alphabet with its first letter, but also
has this initial letter repeated at the beginning of each
of its three verses. Alphabetical acrostics are not
unknown elsewhere in the Old Testament ; there are
several instances of them in the Psalms.^ The method
is generally thought to have been adopted as an
expedient to assist the memory. Clearly it is a somewhat
artificial arrangement, cramping the imagination
of the poet ; and it is regarded by some as a sign of
literary decadence. Whatever view we may take of it
from the standpoint of purely artistic criticism, we can
' Isa. xiv. ^ ff.
^ E.g., Psalms ix., x., xxv., xxxiv., xxxvii., cxix., cxlv.