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La poetica del silenzio di Dio -presentazione

Abstract

The five poems that make up the Book of Lamentations form a unitary literary work and, consequently, the individual poems must be read following the thread that unites them. Although it is possible that at the origin of the poems, there is not only one author and above all that the author of chapter 3 may be different from the author of the other chapters, the work, as now found in the Hebrew biblical canon, has a marked unitary character determined by the use of the same metric form (the qinah, "lamentation"), by language and by reflection on the tragic theme of the fall of Jerusalem. The same author of the third poem, which is in close contact with the school of Isaiah, could be the editor of the final edition of the book. It is significant, however, that the questions left open in the Book of Lamentations have been answered in the Book of Isaiah, particularly in chapters 40-54. The Book of Isaiah, in the second part, provides a response to the aspiration for survival so evident in the Book of Lamentations also by using the same verbal formulations. Many rabbis and some modern exegetes have noted a similarity of language and themes between the Book of Lamentations and the part of the Book of Isaiah commonly attributed to an anonymous prophet of the exile, called Deutero-Isaiah, particularly in the invitation «Console, console my people, your God says» (Is 40:1), but almost never and only indirectly have they maintained that there is a true relationship between the two texts.