Abstract

In chapters 1 and 2 of the book of Lamentations the city of Jerusalem and the temple precinct are personified, and the story of the city's destruction is told lyrically as the plight of a woman who has been abandoned and abused. Perhaps the most emotionally charged aspect of Zion's personification in Lamentations, that of a woman raped, has been noted only in passing. B. Bakke Kaiser and A. Mintz have identified possible images of rape in Thr 1,8 and 10. In this note our aim is to amplify and refine the observations of these scholars concerning this striking image.