dssdead-sea-scrolls
B — Hymns and Poems
Chapter 6
Premium narration
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Several fragments of a poem inspired by the biblical Book of Lamentations have been preserved in Cave. Only fragment offers a text long enough for intelligible translation. See J. M. Allegro and A. A. Anderson, DJD, V, 75-7; cf. J. Strugnell, RQ, 250- 52. A second work of a similar nature has appeared in M. Baillet, DJD, VII, 79-80. Both texts are dated to the second half of the first century BCE. 4Q179, fr. How solitary lies the city, the princess of all the peoples is desolate like a forsaken woman; and all her daughters are forsak[en like a forsaken woman, like a woman hurt and forsaken by her husband. All her palaces and her walls are like a barren woman; and like a sheltered woman are all her paths; all her.. like a woman of bitterness, and all her daughters are like women mourning for their husbands; all her.. like women deprived of their only children. Weep, weep, Jerusalem
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her tears flow upon her cheeks because of her sons.. 4Q501 Give not our inheritance to strangers, nor our property to foreigners. Remember that we are the forsaken of Thy people and the forsaken of Thine inheritance. Remember the desolate children of Thy Covenant.. Thy freely devoted.. they err with no one to bring them back; they are broken with none to bind them; they are bent down with none to raise them up. The damned of Thy people have surrounded me with their lying tongues. They have been turned.. and Thy boughs to the progeny of a woman. Look and see the shame of the sons of Thy people, for our skin is burning and feverish heat has seized us because of their reviling tongue.
