1. Name, Place in Canon, Authorship

The Book of Lamentations consists of five songs. The book’s usual name in modern Bible versions comes, by way of the Vg (Lamentationes) and the LXX (Thrēnoi [Ieremiou]), from Jewish tradition, in which it is called qı̂nôt, “laments for the dead” (b. B. Bat. 15a). In Hebrew MSS and printed copies it is usually named after the first word: ʾêkâ, “alas, how.”

Though Lamentations is placed among the Megilloth (i.e., festal scrolls), the LXX,…