Ekah (Lamentations) Rabbati

The Midrash on Lamentations or Eichah (Lamentations) Rabbah (Hebrew: מדרש איכה רבה), like Bereshit Rabbah and the Pesiḳta ascribed to Rab Kahana, belongs to the oldest works of the Midrashic literature. It begins with 36 consecutive proems forming a separate collection, certainly made by the author of the Midrash. They constitute more than one-fourth of the work (47b-52b in the Venice ed., 1545). These proems and, perhaps, most of the annotations, which are arranged in the sequence of the verses (52c-66b), originated in the discourses of which, in olden times, the Book of Lamentations had been the subject. The haggadic explanation of this book—which is a dirge on the destruction of the first and second Temples in Jerusalem and the national destruction that came along with it—was treated by scholars as especially appropriate to the Ninth of Ab, to the day of the destruction of the Temple, and to the eve of that fast-day (comp. Yer. Shab. 15c; Lam. R. iv. 20; Yer. Ta'an. 68d et seq.).

The sources from which Yerushalmi drew must have been accessible to the author of Eichah Rabbah, which was certainly edited some time after the completion of the former, and which probably borrowed from it. In the same way older collections must have served as the common source for Eichah Rabbah, Bereshit Rabbah, and especially for the Pesiḳta de-Rab Kahana. The haggadic comment on Hosea vi. 7 appears earlier as a proem to a discourse on Lamentations, and is included among the proems in this Midrash (ed. S. Buber, p. 3a) as a comment on Gen. iii. 9 (Ber. R. xix.). The close of this proem, which serves as a connecting link with Lamentations i. 1, is found also in the Pesiḳta as the first proem to pericope xv. (p. 119a) to Isa. i. 21, the Hafṭarah for the Sabbath before the Ninth of Ab (comp. Müller, Einleitung in die Responsen, p. 38).

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