"Thembinkosi’s cries are still hurting me today. I want to know from the police where they took my children. Where did they kill my children?" Nohle Anna Nika-Jonas whose three sons, at the time all in high school, were taken from their shanty by police on the night of July 1, 1976.

"Just in pieces . . . pieces of him, brains, splattered all over the room". Catherine Mlangeni describing how she found her son Bheki’s body after he had been blown up by a police booby trap.

Joyce Mtimkulu, mother of Siphiwo killed by police, said she blamed former president F W de Klerk: "He must have known about it. He must have known what was going on. I have always said it was the system. I still feel very sad. I have suffered for a long time and I want to see the men who killed Siphiwo".

Cynthia Ngewu, mother of Christopher "Rasta" Piet killed by police, said her notion of reconciliation was to "restore the humanity of the perpetrators. . . . I don’t want to replace one evil with another".

"In a flash my whole youth was gone." Marina Geldenhys, victim, car bomb explosion, Pretoria, May 20, 1983.

"I must admit I cry easily." Archbishop emeritus Desmond Tutu, Chairperson of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Despite the formidable task of reconstructing our nation, the miracle of April 1994 cannot be summarily erased. After years of political bargaining, we now have a bill of rights enshrined in a new constitution with a constitutional court to watch over the rights of every citizen. Our first democratically elected government is in power and most local authorities now too have their elected bodies. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission has afforded all victims of the apartheid years the opportunity to tell their stories, to weep and to rage over their losses and to seek reparation. All these events were inconceivable not long ago.

I write as a white South African woman who has lived through decades of apartheid in a multi-cultural, ethnically and religiously pluralistic society and which has known the sweet smell of democracy only very recently. This contribution begins by reflecting on the themes of difference and otherness from my particular context. Clearly South Africans have not managed to live justly and respectfully with one another across our differences. The tales told at the Commission’s hearings bear testimony to the tragedies of our past. The second half of this paper then examines what the age old custom of lament can bring to the healing of the pain in my country.

Dealing with difference elicits at least three problematic responses. In the first, the other is simply seen as a tabula rasa, a person with no story, no selfhood, no history. Difference is then made over into sameness. The underlying text is: "You should be like me. But, as you are not like me, remember that I am the center, the fixed point by which you and `the rest’ will be defined". This is the language of dominant power. In reality, there is no one center. There never was—except in the delusions of certain dominant philosophies and political systems.

A second response is a familiar one in today’s world. The other is experienced as a threat. The poisonous apartheid mentality of Afrikaner nationalism, the genocidal activities of the Nazis and the Hutus, the intransigent otherness of the Serbs, Bosnians and Croats, and all racist and sexist attitudes, are contemporary examples of otherness as threat. Lastly, there is a response which is manifested in two distinct yet similar ways: The other is either seen as some exotic, romantic being who does not have to be taken seriously since she or he is so different, or the other is seen as a universal category of person with no particularity. The nineteenth century western idea of the "noble savage", or the unthinking assumptions in the early days of the women’s movement that saw "women" as one large unspecified category of human beings, are examples of this kind of thinking. Against these problematic responses, the question arises: What, in fact, is meant by difference and otherness?

In the face of the pain and suffering caused by the inability of South Africans to deal with difference and otherness, coupled with the longing for a healed society, the age old tradition of lament offers interesting possibilities. Traditions of lament exist in a variety of religious communities. I write out of Christian background and shall focus on the background and tradition of lament in western Christianity as an important ingredient in our country’s search for healing and reconciliation.

Why lament? My interest in lament was originally aroused by the praxis of a women’s human rights organization called the Black Sash. For well neigh forty years the women of the Black Sash engaged in the work of justice, in advice offices in different parts of our country, in acts of civil disobedience, in propagating and monitoring human rights and in protesting waves of racist laws and repressive political actions. Their name was derived from the public wearing of black sashes as a sign of mourning for injustice. The sight of white women standing with their sashes, eyes downcast, at times holding punchy placards, became a familiar sight during the years of the struggle for democracy. This public lament for injustice haunted the lives of the apartheid politicians, a visible demonstration of (one of a few) pockets of white resistance to racist policies. The activities of the Black Sash earned them a generous accolade from Nelson Mandela who, in his first speech after his release from prison, called them "the conscience of white South Africans".

Resistance to the tragedy of suffering finds expression in the hope for healing and wholeness, and in the embracing of actions which express both an understanding of the tragic vision of life and that which counters tragedy. The search for healing is not to be seen as merely an individual quest for personal healing. Women know how difficult it is to separate the personal and the political. Our crying need is to "bind up the wounds" at every level, and for all, in different ways.

Healing is inseparable from justice-seeking. In a context with a history glutted with blatant injustices, doing justice is an inescapable priority. This raises the vexed question of perpetrators who are applying for amnesty to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. As their atrocities are revealed, the relatives of victims experience afresh the trauma of loss and grief and, not surprisingly for some, feelings of anger and retribution. We are learning that justice is more elusive than we had thought and that the need for justice is, in this case, superseded by political compromise reached in our negotiated transition to democracy. We remind ourselves constantly that the granting of amnesty was a crucial ingredient in this negotiated settlement, one which prevented the inevitable, blood bath that stared us in the face. Nonetheless the hunger for justice remains. The moral significance of the victims anger and the desire for retribution should not be trivialized or ignored.

The quest for healing praxis is in essence the expression of the dire need for the healing of creation. Humanity’s social, political and spiritual needs are both challenged and encouraged by a theology which places the values of a healed and mended creation at its center. This is not a solitary task. For healing praxis to be truly restorative, it has to be collaborative and sustained action for justice, reparation and liberation, based on accountability and empowered by love, hope and passion. It is not the prerogative of any one group of people. It can emerge from the actions and knowledge of those who are suffering, marginalized and oppressed, as well as from those who have privilege and power, provided they too understand its genesis in the hope for a restored creation and are willing to hear the pain of the suffering of "the others" and to act in response.

Lament is, I suggest, one such response. For those who are victims, lament can be an entirely spontaneous response. For those who bear the responsibility for causing suffering, a process of coming to awareness is necessary before lament can happen. In this process, acceptance of accountability, memory, repentance, receiving forgiveness and making reparation, all play a role. These stages cannot be neatly delineated. Whites in this country ought to understand that forgiving and being forgiven are acts of mercy and that both call for profound transformation. Waiting for forgiveness is an exercise in a state of dependence, an acceptance of a kind of unfreedom. Forgiveness denied is always a possibility. But one waits nonetheless. And, whilst one waits, one laments.

Lament is a form of mourning. It is also more. It is somehow more purposeful and more instinctive than mourning. At times it is filled with notes of accusation and at others with contriteness and pain. Lamenting is both an individual and a communal act which signals that human relationships have gone awry. While lamenting is about past events, it also has present and future dimensions. It acknowledges the brokenness of the present because of injustice. It instinctively makes a link between healing and mourning which make new relationships possible in the future. Lament should be generous not grudging, explicit not generalized, unafraid to contain petitions and confident that they will be heard. Above all lament is never for a purpose. It is never utilitarian. Lament is an existential wail which comes from the depths of the human soul. The cry of lament, while ostensibly wrought from the human heart in situations of suffering, is filled with enigmatic energies, unbearable urges, moments both profane and sacred. It is a coil of suffering and hope, awareness and memory, anger and relief, desires for vengeance, forgiveness and healing. It is, in essence, supremely human.

It is not easy to assess how effective these curbs were. The relationship between ritual and lament showed a change in emphasis from grander public lamentation to a more personal kind of lamentation at the tomb of the deceased. But funerals never became purely private affairs and thus in the rural areas where restrictive legislation did not penetrate to the same extent as in the cities, for a long time the tradition of lament continued much as it had always done, in some cases even until present times. But as a professional class, women lamenters with their particular gifts of poetry and songs for the dead, were no longer at center stage as the makers of lament. It is interesting to note that in a patriarchal society lamenting gave women, who already had control over birth as midwives, a temporary control over the rites concerned with death.

I suspect that what is stake here is the issue of power as control. Weeping, wailing women communicating emotions of grief, mourning and loss are not easily controlled and can thus be seen as a threat to the state’s ability and power to preserve order. In western societies women are considered to be more emotional than are men. Is this view derived from the fact that women have a history of being the public lamenters? Or is it undergirded by stereotypes of how women and men ought to be, stereotypes which usually serve the purposes of those in control? Arguably it is more expedient to both project emotions of grief onto women and to allow their bodies occasions on which to express a kind of collective mourning, while the men get on with the ‘real’ business of governance.

Once again the strange notion in western thought surfaces, that emotion stands in opposition to reason. So often we hear of a distinction between the affective and the cognitive, between feeling and thinking. Emotions are viewed as being more ‘bodily’ than are thoughts. Overt bodiliness is not considered to be proper to worship. Marking behavior as ‘improper’ grants the power of definition and eventually of control to those doing the labelling.

As part of the ancient near eastern world, Israel also lamented. The powerful tradition of lament in ancient Israel continues into the practices of modern Jewry. People with faith in a caring God have yet to find a satisfactory answer to the problem of suffering in the world. The ancient Jews were no exception. But there is much to learn from them about how to relate to God in the face of suffering and grief.

The professional status of women as lamenters is alluded to by the prophet Jeremiah. Faced with the destruction of Jerusalem, Jeremiah records God calling for "the mourning women to come; send for the skilled women to come; let them quickly raise a dirge over us" (Jer.9:17,18a). These women were professional mourners who generally followed the bier of the deceased, lamenting the person’s death in elegiac measures. Reading this text from a feminist biblical scholar’s point of view, Angela Bauer finds intriguing possibilities. God not only calls the women to listen, but orders them to teach (v19) about how to mourn and be dirge-singers in this time of "terror and tribulation". These women are to lead the wailing of the people. Bauer comments:

Although not as numerous as the psalms of individual lament, these communal laments show how a people can unite through the experience of hurt, anger, loss. They are important because they move people of faith from private grief to articulate concerns and pain which are shared. In times of social disruption, the psalmist recounts the people’s distress: "By the rivers of Babylon—there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion" (Ps. 137:1). Recalling the reason for their exile, the psalmist cries out: "O God, the nations have come into your inheritance; they have defiled your holy temple; they have laid Jerusalem in ruins" (Ps. 79:1). Communal lament can be both a political and a religiously subversive act. By expressing profound doubt at the accepted ways of understanding human suffering, namely that it is deserved, the psalmists subvert accepted meanings and cry out for deliverance.

Traditionally and overwhelmingly lament is the prerogative of the suffering victim. This is attested to in the scriptures and in acts of lament at funerals in ancient and contemporary societies. Can white South Africans, like David, lament, from "the other side"? Can we in fact afford not to lament? Some whites all too readily "lament" the loss of past privileges while refusing to see the need for deliverance from our murky history and for healing from the wounds that perpetrators inflict on themselves as well as on others. We can lament the misuse of power and privilege, and our lack of courage in not standing up to evil and injustice. Mothers can lament for their sons, drafted into the defence force and emerging after two years, scarred and depressed, cynical or ready to leave for far shores while at the same time remembering other mothers whose sons were tortured, imprisoned, killed and exiled in the cause of the same ideology of white power

I want to suggest that public lament for the injustice and the torments of the past is a potentially healing way of responding to the past. By stressing the public nature of lament, I am suggesting that such lament should be expressed communally as a liturgical act. It will have to be preceded by public acts of repentance. At the same time, however, lamenting publicly calls for individual hearts which are weeping and raging, seeking a response from God. The very nature of lament is profoundly spiritual and profoundly political. Remorse, anger, the need for accountability and justice, combine as we contend with God. Ever present in the lament is the hope for a better day.

Just as holocaust museums or memorials for the dead are places for pilgrimage where people can gather publicly to remember, to mourn and to lament, South Africans can now make our own places to lament the years when difference and otherness were the cause of so much tragedy. Perhaps we need a memorial to the victims of apartheid with a Book of Lament which records the names of the victims and which can be signed by both those who knew the pain of oppression as well as by those who repent of being oppressors. Such a record can also serve as a salutary reminder of our history should we ever be tempted in the future to elevate difference and otherness again to a canon of exclusion and so destroy our fledgling civil society.

Religious institutions can also offer space for lament. In the Christian tradition, liturgical leaders will have to be convinced of the necessity for lament. These leaders are still overwhelmingly male. History testifies to the fact that men in authority may not be wholly comfortable with the practice of lament. Will the clerical dominance of ritual not be threatened by a lamenting congregation? And may this threat not be exacerbated by women leading the lament? Yet, the liturgy can offer a framework, a ‘safe space’, within which people can lament while at the same time the structure of the liturgy can contain lamenting which becomes too prolonged, thus offering reassurance to congregants who are as yet nervous of the practice. This of course raises the specter of a domesticated lament. Can real lament be contained lament? Have existing liturgical traditions anything to offer lamenting hearts? Traditional liturgies are not without elements of lament. In liturgical churches, confession of sin, reading of psalms, words of judgment and praise, and communal prayers are moments which can embody lament. Only a slight shift in emphasis is needed to rivet attention on the sublime ambiguity of lamenting hearts which praise God. In churches with less formal and more flexible liturgical traditions, members can be encouraged to bring their own prayers and songs of lament for inclusion in worship services. In all cases the need to lament can only emerge in communities in which the communal longing for healing is compelling enough to allow pain, anger and loss to be articulated while contrite hearts speak words of repentance.

Finally, public lament can start with the voices of women and marginalized and oppressed people telling their stories, daring to rage and wrangle with God, questioning doctrines of faith that glorify suffering, resisting further pain and calling on God to act, forgive or restore. Modern women’s desire to lament is no different from those women in antiquity who led the lament. The women in Jeremiah or those who followed Jesus carrying his cross to Golgotha "beating their breasts and wailing for him" (Lk 23:27), or those who today stand at the open grave of a child, all need to lament.

A voice is heard in Ramah,

lamentations and bitter weeping.

Rachel is weeping for her children;

she refuses to be comforted for her children,

because they are no more.

Jeremiah 31:15

Rachels abound in South Africa. Once we drench Ramah in lamentations and tears, we may, like the psalmists, find words of hope.

1. See also Denise M Ackermann, "On hearing and lamenting: Faith and truth-telling," in H. R. Botman and R. M. Petersen (eds.), To Remember and to Heal: Theological and Psychological Reflections on Truth and Reconciliation. (Cape Town: Human and Rousseau, 1996); "`Take up a taunt song’: Women, Lament and Healing in South Africa," in Leny Lagerwerf (ed.), Reconstruction: The WCC Assembly Harare 1998 and the Churches in Southern Africa. (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 1998).

2. This Commission was set up in 1996 with the threefold task of investigating human rights abuses during the apartheid era, determining reparations for the victims of gross human rights violations and granting amnesty to perpetrators of human rights abuses.

3. According to the World Health Organization, the incidence of violent death in South Africa—57 per 100,000 people—is now the highest in the world (Cape Times, May 13, 1996).

4. The discussion in this section contains extracts from an article by me entitled "Becoming Fully Human: an Ethic of Relationship in Difference and Otherness," Journal of Theology for Southern Africa, 102, 13-28.

5. Jacob Neusner, "Thinking about `The Other’ in religion: It is necessary, but is it possible?" in Lectures in Judaism in the History of Religions (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990), p. 17 writes: "The single most important problem facing religion for the next hundred years . . . is . . . how to think through difference, how to account, within one’s own faith and framework, for the outsider, indeed for many outsiders".

6. See Collette Guilaumin, Racism, Sexism, Power and Ideology (London: Routledge, 1995), p. 250 who points out that "difference comes form a Latin verb (fero) which means `to carry’ ,`to orient’. Dif-ference adds the idea of dispersion (di) to this orientation; we say `to differ from’. What is important is the little from. . . . The kernel of the meaning is the distance from a center, the distance from a referent (still fero)."

7. Rita Nakashima Brock, Journeys by Heart: A Christology of Erotic Power (New York: Crossroad, 1988), p. 1.

8. See Denise M. Ackermann and Tahira Joyner, "Earth-healing in South Africa: Challenges to Church and Mosque," in R. R. Ruether (ed.), Women Healing Earth: Third World Women on Ecology, Feminism, and Religion (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1996).

9. See Julia Kristeva, Strangers to Ourselves, tr. L. S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991).

10. M. Shawn Copeland, "Difference as a Category in Critical Theologies for the Liberation of Women," in E. S. Fiorenza and M. S. Copeland (eds.), Feminist Theology in Different Contexts, Concilium 1996/1 (London: S.C.M. Press, 1996), p. 143 writes: "Difference insinuates not merely variance, but deviation, division, discrepancy, discord, incongruity, incompatibility, inconsistency, anomaly, contrariety, aberration and misunderstanding". She adds: ". . . difference carries forward struggle for life in its uniqueness, variation and fullness; difference is a celebrative option for life in all its integrity, in all its distinctiveness".

11. See Ruthellen Josselson, The Space between Us: Exploring the Dimensions of Human Relationships (San Francisco: Jossy-Bass Publishers, 1992), pp. 2-3, where she observes that the word ‘relationship’ has become hackneyed. "When people speak of ‘having a relationship’, they are usually referring to a sexual partnership. Relationships are to be ‘had’ rather than "created in the flow of intention, action and response between people". See also pp. 4-10 where she sets out eight dimensions of relatedness which form the core of her book.

12. Beverly Wildung Harrison, Making the Connections: Essays in Feminist Social Ethics, ed. by Carol S. Robb (Boston: Beacon Press, 1985), p. 15. See also the work of the Stone Center in regard to the "self-in-relation": Jean Baker Miller, "The Development of Women’s Sense of Self" and Janet L. Surrey, "The `Self-in-Relation’: at Theory of Women’s Development," both in Judith V. Jordan, Alexandra G. Kaplan, Jean. B. Miller, Irene P. Shriver and Janet L. Surrey, Women’s Growth in Connection: Writings from the Stone Center (New York: Guilford Press, 1991), pp. 11-26, 51-66. Apart from feminist theorists and theologians who have propagated the idea of relationship as central to our understanding of being human beings in communities, a concern for community has also been the focus of recent writings by men. See Christian ethicists, Larry Rasmussen, Moral Fragments and Moral Community: A Proposal for Church and Society (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993) and Stanley Hauerwas, A Community of Character: Toward a Constructive Christian Ethic (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), and the historical/sociological critique of American Society in Robert Bellah, Habits of the Heart (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), as well as the moral philosophy of Alasdair MacIntyre, especially his After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981).

13. Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu.

14. Quoted from Luke L Pato, "Family and Human Sexuality from the Perspective of an African World-view," unpublished paper presented to pre-Lambeth discussion group, October 1995.

15. A critique of ubuntu among some African intellectuals is that it can have the effect of "levelling" people to one accepted norm which can stifle individuality.

16. For a discussion on ubuntu and seriti (force, power) which enable us to live in relatedness, see also Augustine Schutte, "Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu: An African conception of humanity," in P. J. Hartin, B. F. Connor, P. B. Decock (eds.), Becoming a Creative Local Church: Theological Refections on the Pastoral Plan, a project commissioned by the Catholic Theological Society of Southern Africa (Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 1991), pp. 185-200.

17. Desmond Tutu, An African Prayer Book (New York: Doubleday), p. xiv.

18. In the early 1960’s, the Scots philosopher John MacMurray attempted to offer a counter to modern European philosophy’s preoccupation with the self understood primarily as a thinker, inactive in the world. In Persons in Relation (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International, 1991), p. 28, he formulates his basic thesis: "I exist as an individual only in a personal relation to other individuals." We can isolate ourselves from others intentionally so that our relation to others becomes impersonal. In consequence I can, as MacMurray points out, treat you as object, refusing the personal relationship. This is what torturers do to their victims—making them objects in an impersonal relationship and refusing to `know’ the victims. We can only know other persons by entering into a relationships with them.

19. Martin Buber, I and Thou (New York: Scribner and Sons, 1958); Ricoeur, Oneself as Another; Levinas, Totality and Infinity.

20. See Isabel Carter Heyward, The Redemption of God: A Theology of Mutual Relation (Lanham: University of America Press, 1982); Beverly Wildung Harrison, Making the Connections: Essays in Feminist Social Ethics, ed. By C. S. Robb (Boston: Beacon Press, 1985); Elizabeth A. Johnson, She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse (New York: Crossroad, 1994); Catherine Keller, From a Broken Web: Separation, Sexism, and Self (Boston: Beacon Press, 1986).

21. See Antjie Krog, Country of my Skull (Johannesburg: Random House, 1998) in which the author, a white Afrikaner woman, documents two years of reporting on the TRC.

22. Wendy Farley, Tragic Vision and Divine Compassion: A Contemporary Theodicy (Louisville, Ky: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1990), p. 22.

23. Farley, Tragic Vision, pp. 22-23.

24. Walter Brueggemann, "The Shape for Old Testament Theology: 11 Embrace of Pain," The Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 47, 400.

25. Ibid., 401.

26. Ibid., 402.

27. See Dorothee Sölle, Suffering (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975), pp. 70-74 for her description of the phases of suffering which include lament.

28. See Paul W. Ferris Jr., The Genre of Communal Lament in the Bible and the Ancient Near East (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992) p. 9, for a working definition of the term "genre".

29. See also Samuel N. Kramer’s critical study, Lamentation Over the Destruction of Ur (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1940). According to Ferris, The Genre, pp. 21-25, there are six distinctive Sumerian city-laments, the three major include the above mentioned lament, "Lamentation over the Destruction of Ur" and "Lamentation over the Destruction of Nippur". See also Ferris pp. 25-28, 48-50.

30. This insight, attributed to the Sumerologist Thorkild Jakobsen, was made at a Jewish Christian dialogue held at Harvard Divinity School in 1965 and related to me in conversation with Krister Stendahl in November 1996.

31. Margaret Alexiou, The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), p. 86.

32. Alexiou (1974:6) points out that on Attic and Athenian funerary plaques and vases detailed pictures of lament are found of women acting as professional mourners.

33. Gail Horst-Warhaft, Dangerous Voices: Women’s Laments and Greek Literature (London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 113-114.

34. Ibid., p. 103.

35. Ibid., p. 6.

36. T.B.L. Webster, The Greek Chorus (London: Methuen, 1970), pp. 114, 127. For further insights, see Peter D. Arnott, Public Performance in the Greek Theater (London: Routledge, 1989), p.34 and Arthur Pickard-Cambridge), The Dramatic Festivals of Athens, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), pp. 86-91.

37. Horst-Warhaft, Dangerous Voices, pp. 137-141.

38. Dorothy M. Koonce, "Formal Lamentation for the Dead in Greek Tragedy," (Ph.D. thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1962), pp. 4,6.

39. Alexiou, The Ritual Lament, p. 19.

40. Holst-Warhaft, Dangerous Voices, pp. 3-4.

41. Scholars have debated the issue whether Israel’s laments are essentially different from those of their surrounding cultures. Patrick D. Miller, They Cried to the Lord: The Form and Theology of Biblical Prayer (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994), pp. 29-31 warns against seeking false dichotomies in lament in religions which are essentially polytheistic and Israel’s monotheism. Although not precisely identical there is, according to Miller, an high degree of formal similarity. Ferris (1992) in his comparative study between lament in the Hebrew and Mesopotamian cultures concludes that Hebrew laments show a cultural dependence on the common oriental culture of their times. See also S. N. Kramer, "A Sumerian Lamentation. (The Lamentation over the Destruction of Ur)," in J.B. Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), p. 455-463 and the work of Geo Widengren, The Accadian and Hebrew Psalms of Lamentation as Religious Documents: A Comparative Study (Stockholm: Bokförlags Aktiebolaget Thule, 1937).

42. Claus Westermann, Lamentations: Issues and Interpretations, tr. C. Meunchow (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994), p. 94.

43. The Hebrew kinah is the technical term for the lament for the dead.

44. Claus Westermann, Praise and Lament in the Psalms, tr. K.R. Crim and R.N. Soulen (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1981), p. 169.

45. Brueggemann, "The Shape," 402-403.

46. Ibid., 405.

47. Ibid., 406.

48. Miller, They Cried, p. 237.

49. Angela Bauer, "Tracking Her Traces: A Literary-Theological Investigation of Gender in the Book of Jeremiah" (Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Union Theological Seminary, 1993), ch. 3.

50. Peter Levi, The Lamentation of the Dead with the Lament for Arthur O’Leary by Eileen O’Connell, tr. E. Dillon, inaugural lecture as professor of poetry in the University of Oxford, given on 25 October 1984 (London: Anvil Press Poetry Ltd., 1984), p. 11.

51. For earlier scholarship on the psalms which informs the work of both Claus Westermann and Walter Brueggemann, see the historical critical scholarship of Hermann Gunkel and Joachim Begrich, Einleitung in die Psalmen: Die Gattungen der religiösen Lyrik Israels (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1928, 1933). See also Sigmund Mowinckel, The Psalms in Israel’s Worship (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1962) who worked on establishing a religio-cultural framework for understanding the psalms.

52. Walter Brueggemann, The Psalms and the Life of Faith (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), p. 43.

53. Walter Brueggemann, "From Hurt to Joy, from Death to Life," Interpretation 28, 1974, 4.

54. Westermann, Praise and Lament, pp. 52-55, 64-71.

55. See Mowinckel 1962, The Psalms and Hans Schmidt 1928. Das Gebet der Angeklagten im Alten Testament, BZAW 40 (Giessen: Alfred Töpelmann), who argue for lament in the temple setting. See Erhard Gerstenberger, Der bittende Mensch: Bittritual und Klagelied des Einzelnen im Alten Testament, WMANT 51 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1980) who suggests that lament took place in the home.

56. For communal lament see Ps. 44, 60, 74, 79, 80, 83, 89.

57. Ferris, The Genre, p. 10.

58. Ibid., p. 109.

59. For individual lament see, Ps. 6, 13, 22, 27, 35, 38, 42, 43, 88, 102, 109.

60. Westermann, Praise and Lament, p. 178.

61. Walter Brueggemann, The Message of the Psalms: A Theological Commentary (Minneapolis: Augsburg), p. 68.

62. See Michalowski, The Lamentation, pp. 43, 45, 49, 69. Here lament and praise also occur together. The lamenting goddess cries "Alas, the destroyed city, my destroyed temple", describes orchards "scorched like ovens" and ends in affirmation "O Nanna, your kingship is sweet, return to your place! May a good abundant reign be long lasting in Ur!".

63. Brueggemann, The Psalms, p. 58.

64. Ibid., p. 32.

65. Abraham Heschel (in Farley 1990:82) remarks, "Justice dies when dehumanized no matter how exactly it may exercised".

66. Farley, Tragic Vision, p. 81.

67. Dorothee Sölle, Suffering, tr. E. R. Kalin (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975), p. 74.