Abstract
The Lamentations of Jeremiah is a wisdom text that represents a theological reflection of the Exile, or a search for a way how to (a) Spot traces of God's hidden actions in the Exile; (b) Cope with God's judgment, i.e., with God causing a national catastrophe; (c) Transform this stigma into values with which the Exile can be survived and how to continue one's life in the Exile; (d) Transfer (share) this key experience (Jer 16:14-15, 23:7-8). Therefore, the Lamentations of Jeremiah describe one's fight with the consequences of their sins, or a fight for an ability to bear God's judgment and to return to God.
It is a search for a way out, which has the form of coping with adversities. "The Lamentations is the result of a reaction to a catastrophe 586 using various means of and on the background of the religious tradition". At the same time, it is a text with an ambition to change the perspective, i.e., the coordinates of the listener's perception of God (aiming to disturb the natural, i.e., religious and mechanical image of God).
It purposefully disrupts stereotypes in thinking and deconstructs traditional religious paradigms. For this reason, the Lamentations of Jeremiah cannot be interpreted from the position of independent observer using merely a rational text analysis.
Understanding the text, which is based on personal testimony, therefore assumes a certain degree of sharing by the listener, that is, a personal involvement in the text and living what they have heard. Therefore, the testimony of the message of the text will to a certain extent be a personal (and thus subjective and individual) testimony of one's participation in the suffering that results from acknowledging one's sings.
The ambition of the text is namely not to inform of the past suffering but to help the audience/readership realize the role of suffering as a way toward perceiving the closeness of God (suffering oneself through to God). The crisis namely cannot be overcome with just a rational analysis of the events (and their causes) but by accepting the suffering as a form of God's way of controlling events (God's justice), or rather by exposing oneself to God's judgment and experiencing the suffering that leads to a self-reflection and, eventually, into one's surrender to God's arms.