Forgotten and Forsaken by God (Lamentations 5:19-20)

"In the wake of the Holocaust and other well-publicized horrors, interdisciplinary study of the grieving process, and recurrent calls for a greater place for lament in the (Christian) liturgy, Lamentations has become the beneficiary of heightened scholarly attention. In this development, the book has, moreover, been approached from a variety of newer perspectives--synchronic, literary, intra- and intertextual, and psychological . . . [Rong] provides here a 'final form' study of the book that devotes special attention to the nature and function of the oft-neglected chapter 5, which, unlike the preceding chapters, does not make use of the alphabetic acrostic device and which serves to end the book on a note of renewed uncertainty and questioning after the seeming shift to trust and affirmation in chapter 3. In addition, Dr. Rong's work--in this too reflecting a widespread contemporary scholarly trend--seeks to bring Lamentations into a dialogue with other comparable texts of the Psalter and the Prophetic Corpus, thereby allowing the specificity of its laments to emerge more sharply. More generally, Dr. Rong also highlights the (as yet underutilized) pastoral and liturgical resource that Lamentations represents, with, e.g., its scriptural warrant for believers' remaining in lament as long as their circumstances require this and resisting the pressure to move on too quickly to praise and confidence. In so doing, Dr. Rong makes discreet reference to the Chinese context from which she comes and to which she is now returning, and Lamentations' particular relevance for that context."



--From the Foreword by Christopher T. Begg