13. _The book of Lamentations_ is designated in Hebrew by the opening word _Echa_, _how_. The unanimous voice of antiquity ascribes it to Jeremiah, and with this tradition agree its internal character and style. It was written in view of the desolation of Judah and Jerusalem by the Chaldeans, by an eye-witness of all the unutterable miseries connected with that catastrophe. While it laments, in strains of the deepest anguish, the desolation of Jerusalem with the slaughter and captivity of its inhabitants, and heaps together images of horror, it ascribes righteousness to God, and acknowledges the manifold sins of the rulers and people as the cause of the overwhelming calamities that had come upon them. We see throughout the feelings of a tender-hearted and compassionate man, of a sincere patriot, and of a devout worshipper of Jehovah beautifully blended together. Sad as is the picture, it is to us who contemplate it in the light of history, not without its lessons of comfort as well as of warning. It teaches us that in the midnight of Zion's adversity her covenant God is with her, and that she has an indestructible life. The prerogative which the Roman bard applied to his country: "Plunge her in the deep, she comes out the stronger"--this high prerogative belongs to the true spiritual Jerusalem, which no fire can destroy, nor floods overwhelm. The structure of this book is peculiar. Its five chapters constitute five poetical compositions, each complete in itself so far as outward form is concerned, but the whole inwardly bound together as parts of one great theme. The first and second chapters consist each of twenty-two verses, arranged in the order of the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet; that is, the first verse beginning with the first letter, the second with the second, and so on. Each of the verses, moreover, contains as a rule _three_ clauses. The third chapter contains sixty-six short verses of _one_ clause each, the first three beginning with the first letter of the alphabet, the next three with the second, and so throughout. In this central chapter, therefore, the alphabetic structure reaches its culmination. The fourth chapter is like the first and second, with the exception that the verses generally consist of _two_ clauses each. The fifth chapter contains twenty-two short verses of _one_ clause each, like those of the third, but not arranged alphabetically.