WE MOURN AS WE REBUILD: ON THE PURPOSE OF MEGILLAT EIKHA
Dr. Ed Greenstein
Our classic text of lamentation, Megillat Eikha, which we chant mournfully on Tisha B’ Av, seems to wallow in sorrow, on the one hand, and to shake an angry fist at the God whose wrath spilled over the top, on the other. Whatever the people may have done wrong, how can the starvation of the children and the desolation of the city be a proportionate response?
Megillat Eikha belongs to an ancient Near Eastern genre, most fully exemplified in Mesopotamian laments, which were composed by priests in the non-Semitic Sumerian language and performed in the 20 th century BCE. The laments mourn the destruction of cities and the temples within them at the end of the storied Ur III Dynasty. Although there is occasional mention of the barbarians who helped bring down the empire, responsibility for the catastrophe is laid at the feet of the high gods, especially the militant god of the storm, Enlil. The Sumerian laments describe the gods’ abandonment of their shrines and the devastation that befell the population.
Two of these early Mesopotamian laments provide what might seem the surprising circumstances of their recitation. They were not composed right after the destruction. Rather, they were composed when the temples were being rebuilt. You see, in order to rebuild a temple on the foundations of the one that lies in ruins, you must raze and level off the foundations, thereby destroying part of the temple that is being replaced. In order to appease the gods of the temples being rebuilt, who see the builders shaving down and offending the ruined structure, lamentation priests profusely mourn the erstwhile temples, as an acknowledgement of their sanctity and status.
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