<P> Unlike standard alphebetical order, the middle chapters in Lamentations have the letter Pe (the 17th letter) comes before Ayin (the 16th). The first chapter uses standard alphabetical order . </P> <P> The book consists of five separate poems . In the first (chapter 1), the city sits as a desolate weeping widow overcome with miseries . In Chapter 2 these miseries are described in connection with national sins and acts of God . Chapter 3 speaks of hope for the people of God: the chastisement would only be for their good; a better day would dawn for them . Chapter 4 laments the ruin and desolation of the city and temple, but traces it to the people's sins . Chapter 5 is a prayer that Zion's reproach may be taken away in the repentance and recovery of the people . </P> <P> Lamentations has traditionally been ascribed to Jeremiah, probably on the grounds of the reference in 2 Chronicles 35: 25 to the prophet composing a lament on the death of King Josiah, but there is no reference to Josiah in the book and no reason to connect it to Jeremiah . The language fits an Exilic date (586--520 BCE), and the poems probably originated from Judeans who remained in the land . Scholars are divided over whether they are the work of one or multiple authors . One clue pointing to multiple authors is that the gender and situation of the first - person witness changes--the narration is feminine in the first and second lamentation, and masculine in the third, while the fourth and fifth are eyewitness reports of Jerusalem's destruction; conversely, the similarities of style, vocabulary, and theological outlook, as well as the uniform historical setting, are arguments for one author . </P> <P> Lamentations combines elements of the qinah, a funeral dirge for the loss of the city, and the "communal lament" pleading for the restoration of its people . It reflects the view, traceable to Sumerian literature of a thousand years earlier, that the destruction of the holy city was a punishment by God for the communal sin of its people . </P>

Who wrote the book of lamentations in the bible
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