ABSTRACT
Surviving Lamentations is no easy task. With its barrage of violent images, the reader is not so much engaged by the book of Lamentations as assaulted by it. But the book itself is less concerned for the survival of the reader than for the suffering, perishing children that haunt its pages. This holds true particularly in Lamentations 1 and 2, where the personified figure of Zion refuses to let the reader's—or God's—attention stray far from the children. After my reading of these chapters below, I will consider how the Targum to Lamentations (its translation into Aramaic) and portions of Isaiah 40-66 can themselves be construed as 'survivals' of Lamentations, keeping alive as they do the concern for children that goes unmet in Lamentations.
