The awareness of authorship is quite a modern concept. Only once did the rabbis of the Talmud disclose their opinion concerning the authorship of biblical books (Babylonian Talmud Bava Batra 14b–15a), and there was no debate among them on matters of authorship. This lack of debate is in contrast to their discussions on the development of halakha that are characterized by many different opinions. With very few exceptions, only from the end of the eighteenth century and only in modern scholarship, did interest develop in such “unimportant” issues as authorship, and indeed rabbis today are reluctant to say anything beyond the talmudic statement.
In Bava Batra, the Talmud says that the Book of Eikha was composed by the prophet Jeremiah (in the sixth century BCE). The modern Orthodox commentary on the book by Mosad Harav Kook gives support to this statement by delineating certain parallels between this book and the life experience of Jeremiah, who saw with his own eyes, the fulfillment of his prophecies concerning the fall of Jerusalem. A number of dirges appear in the Book of Jeremiah (e.g., Jer. 20:7–18), so the connection between the Book of Lamentations and Jeremiah seems to be confirmed. In the Septuagint and the Vulgate, Eikha is placed after the Book of Jeremiah to denote the same concept: one author wrote both books.
However, tradition plays a role not only in religion but also in academic circles, and it is not surprising that until now very few people have considered that part of the Book of Eikha might have been composed by a woman. This is particularly so because the third chapter of the book actually begins with a statement: “I am the man that hath seen affliction” (and ‘man’ is mentioned in that chapter three more times).This again would seem to confirm the view that the book was composed by a man, the prophet Jeremiah.
However, a close reading of the Hebrew text leads to a different conclusion. 1 The first fact that becomes clear is that the Book of Eikha is an anthology, a collection of dirges. The first four of the Book’s five chapters are all written in acrostic form, following the order of the Hebrew alphabet, but the acrostic form used is not the same in all the chapters. In the third chapter, the acrostic has three verses beginning with each letter, not just one, as in the other chapters in acrostic form—and its style and rhythm are different. In contrast to the first four chapters, which are almost completely in the first-person singular, the fifth chapter is in the first-person plural. As well, several ideas appear twice in different chapters. All these factors lead one to conclude that the book was composed by more than one person.
Further analysis of the Hebrew text makes clear that, in the first two chapters, the speaker is a female; this is not evident in English translation, as English is a language that is “blind” from the gender suffix point of view. The speaker presents herself as a female several times, and there is no need to “explain” this by claiming that the speaker is the city of Jerusalem, and “cities” are female in Hebrew, a language in which all nouns are gendered. In addition, several of the words and phrases in both these chapters, such as the reference to male lovers, reveal the femininity of the text. The simple and straightforward explanation is that the speaker in the first two chapters is a woman who is lamenting and weeping for her city and for the Temple. We know that women were very involved in funeral practices in biblical times and were the ones who usually composed and recited laments. The unusual order of the alphabet in the second chapter—Samekh–Peh–Ayin, instead of the usual sequence Samekh– Ayin–Peh—leads me to the conclusion that this chapter was composed by a different woman from the one who composed the first chapter. There is also a difference in tone between the two chapters—the first is one of despair, the second of anger—and this supports the view that the two chapters were composed by different women. 2
However, it seems clear that the third chapter was composed by a male who states his maleness in the introduction of his dirge, underlining his gender with the words, “I am the man,” specifically to contrast with the preceding chapters. Indeed, all the parallels found between the Book of Eikha and Jeremiah are limited to the third chapter. Moreover, comparing carefully the language of the dirges in the Book of Jeremiah to the third chapter of Eikha leads to an interesting conclusion. We can look at the way the composer of the dirge in Jeremiah 20: 7–18 and the composer of the third chapter of Eikha describe themselves by analyzing the statistical frequency of the self-referential suffix or prefix in the Hebrew. This analysis shows that both texts have the same character: The composer of both texts is highly aware of himself, and both texts have almost the same percentage of words denoting himself as the mourner (18% and 16.4% of the words). This analysis makes what literary scholars call a kind of fingerprint of the text, and this fingerprint is very different from the first two chapters of the book. The male in the third chapter sees himself in the middle of the scene and describes the destruction as part of his own experience; in the first two chapters the speakers do not do this. Only 11 percent and 3 percent of the words of these chapters are self-reflective. 3
“…it was usually the women of the Bible… who led laments…”
The gender of the author of the fourth chapter is not easily discernible, but an analysis of the text of this chapter, as well as its affinities with the first two chapters, and not with the third chapter, leads me to conclude that it was mainly composed by yet another woman. Examining the style and content of these chapters, it would seem that the women in each of the three chapters (1, 2, and 4) present their “femaleness” in a different way, with a different degree of emphasis, parallel to the way they each describe the disasters that befell them.
The fifth chapter in Eikha is different yet again from the other chapters: first, it is not in acrostic form, although it does have twenty-two verses—the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet. Second, it is presented in the first-person plural and not in a singular voice. Given the view that the book is a collection of individual dirges that might have been performed in some sort of ceremony—and the alphabetical order of the verses in the first four chapters is indeed an indication for a modern reader that the text was composed orally and performed—it makes sense that, at the end, all the performers come together in a chorus to make a dirge in a collective mode to denote the national loss beyond the individual losses. This would explain the distinct nature of the fifth chapter.
It is important to be aware of the difference between an author and a composer of texts. The conclusion that chapters 1, 2, and 4 in Eikha were probably composed by three different women does not confirm female authorship of the book. The individual chapters may have been composed and performed by women, but the actual writing down would have been separate. This process of writing is evident from Jeremiah 36, where it stated that the prophet spoke while his scribe, Baruch, son of Neriah, committed his prophecy to writing.
Of course, there were women who could write in antiquity (e.g., Jezebel [1 Kings 21:8] or Esther [9:29]), and more than thirty seals of Jewish women from the eighth to the fourth centuries BCE have been discovered, which indicates that maybe some of the dirges in the Book of Eikha were actually written down by a woman. However, although both women and men in this period wrote and performed laments, it is still more probable that a man wrote the text down because the dirges focus primarily on national symbols: the kingdom and the Temple. These symbols are generally associated with the domain of men and, in particular, priests (and one should remember that Jeremiah was a priest.)
In all probability, the anthologist, the one who collected the dirges together, knew that some were composed by women; nevertheless he did not hesitate to connect them in the same text. No doubt, he held these women in high esteem because they were probably already known as the best performers and public mourners in town, as is borne out by Jeremiah’s own words (9:16–18):
Consider ye, and call for the mourning women, that they may come; and send for the wise women, that they may come…. Hear the word of the Lord, O ye women and let your ear receive the word of His mouth, and teach your daughters wailing, and everyone her neighbor lamentation.
As already mentioned, it was usually the women of the Bible who were the mekonnenot, who led laments while mourning for the dead. Perhaps it was Jeremiah himself who appreciated what these women did and, on one occasion or another, wrote down (with the help of his scribe) the best dirges of his time, collecting them into an anthology and inserting himself in the middle, as seen in the third chapter. Thus, the talmudic statement attributing the Book of Eikha to Jeremiah might still be accurate, even though women probably composed three of its chapters.
Usually people take the Bible as a male text. However, this analysis demonstrates that one should be aware of other ways of looking at an ancient text, and the Bible should be re-examined from the perspective of gender. 4 We can analyze many sections of the Bible for evidence of female composition. Not only can these three chapters of Eikha (chapters 1, 2 and 4) be identified as likely composed by women, but other texts(such as Devora’s song in the Book of Judges, Megillat Ruth, 5 and more) fall into this category as well. One hopes that the riddle of the “female texts” in the Bible will be solved in the coming years.