Weep, O Daughter of Zion: A Study of the City-lament Genre in the Hebrew Bible

The present study seeks to call attention to a literary genre whose existence in the Hebrew Bible, until recently, has gone largely unnoticed, or at least not fully appreciated. The city-lament is a well-known genre from ancient Mesopotamia. The biblical book of Lamentations has periodically been compared to some of the Mesopotamian city-laments. This study proposes that the resemblances (as well as the differences) between Lamentations and these Mesopotamian city-laments result because the texts are related at the level of genre.