Elegy

An elegy in scripture is a formal lamentation — a song composed for the dead, for fallen kings, for ruined cities, for nations brought low. Three traditions run side by side. David sets the royal pattern with elegies for Saul and Jonathan and for Abner. Jeremiah is named as the lamenter par excellence — for Josiah by tradition (2Ch 35:25), and for Jerusalem in the book that bears the form's name. Ezekiel is commanded by Yahweh himself to "take up a lamentation," producing prophetic elegies for the princes of Israel, for Tyre, and for Pharaoh. The verb is the same in each case: a poem is taken up on a subject and pronounced over it as a deliberate act.

David's Elegy for Saul and Jonathan

The longest preserved elegy in the historical books is David's. After the news from Mount Gilboa, "they mourned, and wept, and fasted until evening, for Saul, and for Jonathan his son, and for the people of Yahweh, and for the house of Israel; because they fell by the sword" (2Sa 1:12), and then "David lamented with this lamentation over Saul and over Jonathan his son" (2Sa 1:17). The poem has a title — "The Bow" — and a textual provenance: "And he bade them teach the sons of Judah, 'The Bow.' Look, it is written in the Book of Jashar" (2Sa 1:18).

The opening line strikes the note that returns three times as a refrain: "Your glory, O Israel, is slain on your high places! How are the mighty fallen!" (2Sa 1:19). The elegy refuses to let the news travel: "Don't tell it in Gath, Don't proclaim the news in the streets of Ashkelon; Or else the daughters of the Philistines will rejoice, Or else the daughters of the uncircumcised will triumph" (2Sa 1:20). It curses the ground where Saul fell — "You⁺ mountains of Gilboa, Let there be no dew nor rain on you⁺, neither fields of offerings: For there the shield of the mighty was vilely cast away, The shield of Saul, not anointed with oil" (2Sa 1:21). And it praises the dead at the height of their craft: "From the blood of the slain, from the fat of the mighty, The bow of Jonathan didn't turn back, And the sword of Saul didn't return empty" (2Sa 1:22).

The two men are bound together past death. "Saul and Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives, And in their death they were not divided: They were swifter than eagles, They were stronger than lions" (2Sa 1:23). The mourning is dispersed across the social order — to the women of the court who lose a patron: "You⁺ daughters of Israel, weep over Saul, Who clothed you⁺ in scarlet delicately, Who put ornaments of gold on your⁺ apparel" (2Sa 1:24). The most personal turn is Jonathan: "I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan: Very pleasant you have been to me: Your love to me was wonderful, Passing the love of women" (2Sa 1:26). The refrain closes the poem: "How are the mighty fallen, And the weapons of war perished!" (2Sa 1:27).

David's Elegy for Abner

A shorter royal elegy follows when Abner is killed at Hebron. David first puts the whole court into mourning posture — "Rend your⁺ clothes, and gird you⁺ with sackcloth, and mourn before Abner. And King David followed the bier" (2Sa 3:31). Then the king himself takes up a brief, biting couplet: "And the king lamented for Abner, and said, Should Abner die as a fool dies? Your hands were not bound, and your feet were not put into fetters: As a man falls before the sons of iniquity, so did you fall. And all the people wept again over him" (2Sa 3:33-34). The point is that Abner did not die in fair combat. The elegy is also a public verdict on Joab's treachery.

The Lamentations of Jeremiah

For Josiah, the elegy is enacted at the national level and preserved as an institution: "And Jeremiah lamented for Josiah: and all the singing men and singing women spoke of Josiah in their lamentations to this day; and they made them an ordinance in Israel: and, look, they are written in the lamentations" (2Ch 35:25). The verse names a guild — singing men and singing women — whose office is to perform lamentations, and a written collection in which the Josiah elegy was kept.

The Book of Lamentations is the elegy made into a book. Its first chapter is a city-elegy on the model of David's people-elegy, but the subject is Jerusalem after the fall. The opening figure is widowhood: "How the city sits solitary, that was full of people! She has become as a widow, that was great among the nations! She who was a princess among the provinces has become slave labor!" (La 1:1). Like David's "weep over Saul," the speaker turns the grief outward into address: "She weeps intensely in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks; Among all her friends she has none to comfort her: All her companions have betrayed her; they have become her enemies" (La 1:2). The roads themselves grieve — "The ways of Zion mourn, because none come to the solemn assembly; All her gates are desolate, her priests sigh: Her virgins are afflicted, and she herself is in bitterness" (La 1:4).

In the middle of the chapter the city herself speaks: "Is it nothing to you⁺, all you⁺ who pass by? Look, and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow, which is brought on me, With which Yahweh has afflicted [me] in the day of his fierce anger" (La 1:12). She names the comfortlessness twice: "For these things I weep; my eye, my eye runs down with water; Because the comforter that should refresh my soul is far from me: My sons are desolate, because the enemy has prevailed" (La 1:16); "Zion spreads forth her hands; there is none to comfort her" (La 1:17). The chapter closes by handing the grief over to Yahweh's justice rather than mining it for revenge: "They have heard that I sigh; there is none to comfort me ... You have brought the day that you have proclaimed, and they will be like me" (La 1:21).

Alongside the prophetic elegy stands a Davidic national lament in the Psalter. Psalm 60 is keyed to a military reverse and addresses the catastrophe directly to Yahweh: "O God you have cast us off, you have broken us down; You have been angry; oh restore us again. You have made the land to tremble; you have rent it: Heal its breaches; for it shakes. You have shown your people hard things: You have made us to drink the wine of staggering" (Ps 60:1-3). The register is the same — public grief, addressed Godward — but the form is liturgical rather than narrative.

Ezekiel's Prophetic Elegies

Ezekiel is the prophet through whom Yahweh issues the elegy as a command. Three times the divine word arrives with the formula take up a lamentation. The first is for the Davidic line itself: "Moreover, take yourself up a lamentation for the princes of Israel, and say, What was your mother? A lioness: she couched among lions, in the midst of the young lions she nourished her whelps. And she brought up one of her whelps: he became a young lion, and he learned to catch the prey; he devoured man. The nations also heard of him; he was taken in their pit; and they brought him with hooks to the land of Egypt" (Eze 19:1-4). After the lioness-and-whelps figure runs its course, the chapter switches metaphor: "Your mother was like a vine, in your blood, planted by the waters: it was fruitful and full of branches by reason of many waters. And it had strong rods for the scepters of those who bore rule, and their stature was exalted among the thick boughs ... But it was plucked up in fury, it was cast down to the ground, and the east wind dried up its fruit: its strong rods were broken off and withered; the fire consumed them" (Eze 19:10-12). The chapter ends on its own genre-marker: "This is a lamentation, and will be for a lamentation" (Eze 19:14).

The second elegy is for Tyre as a city. The chapter is bracketed by the take up a lamentation command at v.2 — "And you, Son of Man, take up a lamentation over Tyre" (Eze 27:2) — and the answering wail at v.32: "And in their wailing they will take up a lamentation for you, and lament over you, [saying,] Who is there like Tyre, like her that is brought to silence in the midst of the sea?" (Eze 27:32). The "Who is there like ...?" formula matches David's "How are the mighty fallen!" — the elegy turns greatness into pastness.

The third Tyre-elegy targets the king rather than the city, and reaches further into mythic vocabulary: "Son of Man, take up a lamentation over the king of Tyre, and say to him, Thus says the Sovereign Yahweh: You seal up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was your covering ... You were the anointed cherub that covers; I set you; you were on the holy mountain of God; you have walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire. You were perfect in your ways from the day that you were created, until unrighteousness was found in you" (Eze 28:12-15). The fall is named as a pride-fall — "Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty; you have corrupted your wisdom by reason of your brightness: I have cast you to the ground" (Eze 28:17) — and ends with the elegy's characteristic obliteration-formula: "you have become a terror, and you will nevermore have any being" (Eze 28:19).

The fourth, and most extended, is for Pharaoh: "Son of Man, take up a lamentation over Pharaoh king of Egypt, and say to him, You were likened to a young lion of the nations: yet are you as a crocodile in the seas; and you broke forth with your rivers, and troubled the waters with your feet, and fouled their rivers" (Eze 32:1-2). The verb-phrase is the same one used for Eze 19, 27, and 28. The four together establish a single prophetic genre: a poem composed under direct divine commission, addressed to the dead or doomed subject, and pronounced over the body of greatness it has lost.

The Shape of the Form

Across these passages the elegy in the UPDV has a consistent shape. It is always taken up as a deliberate act — David lamenting (2Sa 1:17, 3:33), Ezekiel commanded (Eze 19:1, 27:2, 28:12, 32:2), Jeremiah composing for Josiah (2Ch 35:25). It is preserved — in the Book of Jashar (2Sa 1:18), in the lamentations as an "ordinance in Israel" (2Ch 35:25), and as the canonical Book of Lamentations (La 1). It is performed publicly, often by a guild of singing men and singing women (2Ch 35:25), with rent garments and sackcloth (2Sa 3:31), and dispersed into refrains the daughters of the city are charged to weep (2Sa 1:24). Its subjects are kings and princes, soldiers, cities, nations, and the world-tree of empire. And its closing note is almost always the same: a great thing has been silenced, "brought to silence in the midst of the sea" (Eze 27:32), and "how are the mighty fallen" (2Sa 1:27).