Lamenting the Roles of Gender in the Bible

Lamentations 1:1

Lamentations is one five-page poem bemoaning the fall of Israel. That’s it.

In the poem, Israel is of course a woman. She let others see her nakedness. She let pagan gods into her secret places. She let the enemy put their hands on her treasures. She. She. She did wrong.

The poem changes perspectives a few times; at one point, it is written from the perspective of “the man who has seen affliction” (3:1). The man, of course, suffers a lot but appears to have done little wrong to have earned it. He’s just the brunt of God’s anger. But the man keeps faith in God, because he knows that God alone can save him and his people. Then he begs God to forgive him and his people and restore them to their former glory.

So she fucked it up, but the man kept his wits about him and kept the faith. Accuse me of reading too much into the gendered terms used, but I don’t give a shit. She doesn’t even exist to have done wrong in this instance. She is a group of people, male and female, but that didn’t stop the author from painting the wrongs in completely feminine terms while painting the male figure as the voice of reason and righteousness. Not that this is the first instance of this in this book, but damn it, I’m tired of it.

Also, God shows classic signs of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. There is no winning as the child of a narcissistic parent. Poor Israel.

Next up, Ezekiel.