Heidegger's Bible Handbook: Lamentations: Inscription

1. The Inscription, איכה/How, θρῆνοι/Lamentations.

This book, an appendix to the Prophecy of Jeremiah, is named after its first word, אֵיכָה/how; elsewhere קינות/θρῆνοι/Lamentations, which is a certain grief of soul, conjoined with wailing, mourning, and other pitiable gestures of the body. It is called Lamentations, ἐπειδὰν τούτους τοὺς λόγους ἐθρήνησεν Ἱερεμίας περὶ τῆς Ἱερουσαλὴμ, ὅτε ἑάλω καὶ ἠχμαλωτίσθη ὁ λαὸς, for the very reason that in those speeches Jeremiah lamented over Jerusalem, when the people were led captive, says Saint Athanasius in his Synopsi. That is, Jeremiah was to the people of God, who Simonides was to the Greeks,[1] concerning whom Catullus[2] said, more sorrowful than the tears of Simonides.[3]

[1] Simonides of Ceos (c. 556-468 BC) was one of the nine Lyric Poets of ancient Greece, the first to establish the choral dirge as a form of lyric poetry. His work survives only in fragments. [2] Gaius Valerius Catullus (c. 84 BC-c. 54 BC) was a Roman poet. [3] Poem 38.