Jeremiah

 Jeremiah, known as the “weeping prophet,” is traditionally believed to be the author of Lamentations. The book contains five poems. The first four are written as acrostics using the twenty-two consonants of the Hebrew alphabet to mark the individual stanzas. The book mourns the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in 587 bc when Babylon defeated the nation of Judah and took its people captive. Commentator R. K. Harrison in Jeremiah and Lamentations writes: “[The poems] make it clear that the real tragedy inherent in the destruction of Judah lies in the fact that it could almost certainly have been avoided. The actual causes of the calamity were the people themselves.” Despite the repeated warnings of God’s prophets, they chose idolatry over following the one true God. Alyson Kieda