Texts in Conversation
Baruch portrays Jerusalem as a widow, echoing Lamentations where the once full city sits abandoned. Baruch reshapes the image by shifting blame from the city to her children, presenting her suffering as the result of their failure to obey the Torah.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Lamentations 1:1
Hebrew Bible
1 א (Alef) Alas! The city once full of people now sits all alone! The prominent lady among the nations has become a widow! The princess who once ruled the provinces has become a forced laborer! 2 ב (Bet) She weeps bitterly at night; tears stream down her cheeks. She has no one to comfort her among all her lovers. All her friends have betrayed her; they have become her enemies. 3 ג (Gimel) Judah has departed into exile under affliction and harsh oppression. She lives among the nations; she has found no resting place. All who pursued her overtook her in narrow straits.
Date: 500–401 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Baruch 4:12
Deuterocanon
10 For I have seen the captivity of my sons and daughters, which the Everlasting has brought upon them. 11 For with joy I nourished them, but sent them away with weeping and mourning. 12 Let no man rejoice over me, a widow and forsaken by many. For the sins of my children, I am left desolate, because they turned away from the law of God 13 and had no regard for his statutes. They didn’t walk in the ways of God’s commandments or tread in the paths of discipline in his righteousness. 14 Let those who dwell near Zion come and remember the captivity of my sons and daughters, which the Everlasting has brought upon them.
Date: 200–50 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... The unexpected reference to the widowhood of Jerusalem is surprising (Baruch 4:12a), because there was no previous mention of the city as a woman, or a wife. Added to that, the miserable isolation of the widow Jerusalem is not a result of the death of her husband, but because of the neglect of God’s commandments by her own children (Baruch 4:12b–13). It is noteworthy that the concept and the image of the widowhood of Jerusalem are found explicitly only in Baruch (compare Baruch 4:16). Although the metaphorical image of a marriage between YHWH and Jerusalem is already found in Ezekiel 16:1–8, it is used there in a negative sense (she is a whore) and with an ambivalent connotation. In contrast to Ezekiel 16, the sins are not here attributed to Jerusalem (compare Ezekiel 16:2–3), but to her children, i.e. the inhabitants of Jerusalem (compare Baruch 4:12b–13). In this way, there is not only a rehabilitation, or a release from guilt, but also a hypostasis of Jerusalem ..."
Thomas R. Elßner, “Emotions in Jerusalem's Prayer: Baruch and Lamentations,” in Ancient Jewish Prayers and Emotions, ed. Stefan C. Reif and Renate Egger-Wenzel (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2015), 71–81.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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