Yaakov Jaffe
This is the second posting in a series about the Kinot of the 9th of Av. For the first posting, click here.
Poetry in general, and Jewish liturgical poetry in particular, is a gratifying fusion of form and content. When presenting themes and sharing ideas, poetry is constrained by limitations of its form, arrangement, and structure. Any poetry involves the relationship of form and content, although specific poems and specific genres might be tilted more heavily towards the format or towards the ideas. Some of the more noticeable or common formal rules that can impact a poem are acrostic, biblical quotation, rhyme, and meter.
Many of the Kinot, the liturgical poems for the 9th of Av, are significantly impacted by the specific format chosen by the poet, but none are as tightly coiled and crafted as the first Kinah recited on the morning of the 9th of Av, “Shavat Suru.” Composed by Elazar Ha-Kalir, who lived in Israel in the seventh century or later,[1] this Kinah contains eight core stanzas, followed by a ninth “bridge stanza” which transitions from this Kinah to the next. Each of the core stanzas has six rhyming lines, each about three-five words long. This essay will investigate the many formal considerations behind the Kinah, with an eye towards understanding its message and meaning.
First Formal Element: The First Chapter of Eikhah and the Rhyme of the Kinah
The first formal element, and also the most noticeable one, involves the sixth and final line of each stanza. These lines are nothing more than direct quotes of the first clause of each of the final eight verses of the first chapter of Eikhah (1:15-22). Thus, the author of the Kinah supplies no text of his own in these lines, as the entire line is merely copied. The number of words from each clause varies from three to seven words, but in no stanza is the entire verse cited.[2]
Because the poet had little flexibility in these lines, they often – but not always – fail to flow with the content of the rest of the stanza. Sometimes, they are independent thoughts of worry and woe, not connected with the stanza’s argument. For example, the clause which ends the sixth stanza, “See, Hashem, for it is difficult for me, my innards are heated (homarmaru),”[3] reads like a general and independent exclamation of worry and woe, and not part of the argument of the rest of the stanza, which focuses on the actions of the attacking enemy nations. Similarly, the clause which ends the fourth stanza, “Hashem is righteous,” also is a general feeling of the poet and not specifically tied to the argument or idea of the rest of the stanza, which again focuses on the actions of the enemy nations.
The clauses that are copied from the first chapter of Eikhah are important in that they also govern the rhyme for each specific stanza. After the author decided how many words to cite from the verse, he used the final sounds of the last words of the quote as the rhyme for the entire stanza. For example, the cited clause that ends the sixth stanza concludes with the sounds “maru,” a verb ending, and those cited words then require all the earlier lines in the stanza to end in similarly-ending verbs.
Second Formal Element: Beginning Each Line with a Word from Eikhah
In addition to the sixth line of each stanza coming entirely from the book of Eikhah, the initial words of each of the first five lines of each stanza also all come from the book of Eikhah. Just as the last sound of each line is governed by a rhyme with Eikhah chapter one, the first word of each line, outside of the concluding bridge stanza, is set based on the corresponding word in the book of Eikhah.
The eight stanzas each select a corresponding letter of the Hebrew alphabet, from samekh through tav (a total of eight letters), and then begin each line with the verses in Eikhah that begin with the corresponding letter.[4] Thus, working backwards: the sixth and final line of each stanza is a quote from the first chapter of Eikhah, as noted above. The penultimate line, line five, features the initial word from the correct verse in the second chapter of Eikhah. Lines two, three, and four begin with words found in the third chapter of Eikhah (this chapter is a triple acrostic). The second word of the first line comes from the first word of the corresponding verse in the fourth chapter of Eikhah, and the first word of the stanza is the word from the fifth chapter of Eikhah, whose verse number corresponds to the appropriate Hebrew letter (this chapter is the only one in the book which is not an acrostic). All told, 56 of the 154 verses of Eikhah, or roughly one third of the book, are used for this formal element of the Kinah.
Why start in the middle of the alphabet, with the letter samekh? In addition to this Kinah, Ha-Kalir also composed a piyyut intended to be recited as part of the hazzan’s repetition of the Amidah, which shares some formal elements with this Kinah, but differs in others.[5] Both pieces of liturgical poetry feature significant quoting from Eikhah, although that other poem includes the months of the year and the constellations of the zodiac in place of the travels of the altar discussed in the next section of this essay. That poem features fourteen verses, and explores the first fourteen letters of the alphabet, and therefore this Kinah begins with the fifteenth letter, samekh. Because that poem is recited during the repetition, one fourteen-line stanza applies to each blessing of the Amidah, culminating in the fourteenth blessing, the blessing of Jerusalem.
Why might Eikhah play such a major, organizing role in a liturgical poem written more than a millennium later? Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik believed that the very text of Eikhah provided the paradigm and precedent for the recitation of Kinot more generally. Our new songs of mourning, vengeance, and woe are not a new genre, but are built on the example found in the biblical book of Eikhah. Fittingly, the form of this Kinah, the first one recited, highlights the relationship between the example composed by the prophets and the more modern applications of this type of writing today.
Third Formal Element: The Seven Travels of the Central Altar
The next three formal elements involve single words that appear in a specific line of each stanza, which connect to a central element of the story of the 9th of Av.[6]
Zevahim 112b recounts the seven successive locations for the central altar of the Jewish people from the period of the Torah through the building of the Temple. The third line of each of the first seven stanzas in this Kinah[7] uses the one-word name of each of these locations: Mishkan (the desert Tabernacle), Gilgal (see Joshua 5:10), Shiloh (see Judges 18:31), Nov (I Samuel 21:2), Givon (Kings 1:3:4), Ivuy (a name for the temple, here marking the first Temple),[8] and Devir (another name for the Temple, here marking the second temple).
While these seven words are used, one should not conclude that each time the word is used it actually refers to either Temple or a major altar. In other words, though the form of the Kinah requires a name for God’s sanctuary, the meaning of the word is often used differently within the content of the Kinah. For example, the word “Givon” appears in the sentence “I called to the residence of Givon and also they flooded me”; in context, this word refers to the non-Jewish former residents of the city who had been allies and confidants of the Jews (see Joshua chapter 9) but who have now forsaken them. Similarly, the word “Shiloh” appears in the sentence “the fear of the sin of Shiloh[9] reached her inhabitants.” Again, the word itself relates to the temple on the level of the form of the Kinah, but the content uses the words to refer to the ancient sins violated at Shiloh which prompted the present punishment for the Jewish people.
The 9th of Av is a day which is focused on the loss of the Temples; indeed, the Temples were destroyed on the 9th of Av (Ta’anit 26b), while these other locations were not. Yet, the Kinah includes all the stops of the altar to highlight that there were many special venues for service of God which were destroyed, and all of those are mourned on the 9th of Av: the Temples, which were destroyed by the Romans and Babylonians, the Tabernacle of Shiloh, which was destroyed by the Philistines (Jeremiah 26:6), and even Nov, which was destroyed by the Jews themselves (I Samuel 22:19).[10]
Fourth Formal Element: Priestly Families
Ha-Kalir uses a similar formal technique, using words in a specific location in each stanza, to recall the priestly families who served in the Temple. The 24th chapter of Chronicles lists the 24 different priestly families who served during the time of the first Temple. The Talmud (Arakhin 12b) teaches that after the exile, many of these families either assimilated or chose to remain in exile and did not return for the second Temple; however, the second Temple priests who did return took these 24 names for their families, despite not actually descending from all of the original families that bore those names. After the destruction of the second Temple, the 24 families moved to cities in Northern Israel and began to be associated with specific cities in the North such as Safed, Meiron, Arbel, and Nazareth. Jews continued to pray for the 24 families for centuries after the Temple was destroyed, and so, before the time of Ha-Kalir, the notion of 24 families associated with specific cities would have been well-known.[11] Ha-Kalir references these priestly families in the fourth line of each stanza of the Kinah, either by name or by location. There is a certain irony that in the Kinah we mention the name of a post-second-Temple period location of a second-Temple-period family named for a first-Temple-period family. The place names are an echo of an echo of an echo of the original division in Chronicles.
Because the names of the first fourteen families appeared in the earlier corresponding liturgical poem, this Kinah contains the names of the final ten families, one each in the first seven stanzas of the poem, two in the eighth, and one in the bridge stanza that follows the Kinah’s core eight stanzas. These ten families’ names/locations are Bilgah, Yevanit, Heizir, Nazareth, Arav, Yehezkeil, Yakhin, Gamul, Tzalmin, and Hamat Ariah.[12]
Here, the form of the poem has some flexibility, allowing the poet to choose one of two words to appear somewhere in the fourth line of each stanza. In the first stanza, the family can be referred to as “Ma`ariah” after the name of the place, or “Bilgah” after the name of the family (Chronicles 24:14, Sukkah 56a-56b); the form offered the author two choices of the word to use, and here he chose the name of the family, yielding: “You sheltered yourself, so my heroes were overpowered (huvlegu).”[13] In the sixth stanza, the family can be referred to as Yehezkeil, their name (Chronicles 24:16), or by their location, Nuniah (Pesahim 56a). Since Yehezkeil can be used as a pun from the name of the family into the name of the prophet, the line becomes: “You fought [them] through the hands of [the prophet] Yehezkeil, to avenge them as they rebelled.” In truth, of course, Yirmiyahu was the prophet who fought with the nation much more than Yehezkeil, but since the form requires that the word Yehezkeil appear in the line to reference the priestly family, the prophet which shares the name is the one given as the prophet who admonishes the people.
Two different formal elements coincide in what is either a happy accident or a stroke of poetic genius in the eighth stanza. The second line of that stanza requires a quote from Eikhah 3:64, and as noted above, the line begins with three words from that verse, “Tashiv lahem gemul,” “Return to them payback.” This stanza also requires the name or location of the 22nd family from Beit Hoviah, the family Gamul (Chronicles 24:17). Here, the poet selects the name of the family, Gamul, thereby allowing the single word, Gemul/Gamul to serve simultaneously as both a quote from Eikhah and also the name of the family. One wonders if the poet benefits from a happy accident of the family and stanza coinciding, or if the entire formal structure of the poem was arranged to allow for the priestly family to appear in this stanza alongside the corresponding verse from Eikhah chapter 3. In this case, whatever the prosaic content of the line “Return to them payback like the time of showing them Your face,” the formal aspects of the line are quite impressive.
The eighth stanza also features a second family, because there are more families than there are letters of the alphabet and, therefore, stanzas of the poem. The 23rd family, Delayahu (Chronicles 24:18), lived in Tzalmin, and here the poet selects the name of the location to pun with “Tzalmon,” a name for the underworld in Hebrew poetry,[14] yielding: “Chase them to the underworld (Tzalmon), those who plan evil against your hidden ones.”[15]
Mentioning the priestly families gives us an opportunity to ponder whether the families are victims of the destruction, or whether they are the perpetrators of the crimes that led to the destruction. The priestly aristocracy and the late Hasmonean kings were major contributors to the quotient of sins that led to the destruction. Bilgah, the first family alluded to, is signaled out by the Talmud (Sukkah 56b) for their evil ways, and thus the Kinah demands that we consider whether the kohanim were righteous models of conduct or were part of the problem.
The question is posed perhaps most strongly in the context of the bridge stanza, the one which contains the name of the final priestly family, Ma’azyahu, who lived in Hamat Ariah. The line reads: “He led us with anger to Levo Hamat,[16]/ Until Halah and Havor exiled us.” At first glance, this stanza seems to read as a complaint, listing how we were destroyed, placed into chains, and exiled past Levo Hamat to Halah and Havor. And indeed, the Northern tribes of Israel were exiled to Halah and Havor (II Kings 17:6), even though the exiles of Jerusalem never went to those locations.[17] Two biblical places go by the name Hamat: a city in the Kinneret region, modern day Tiberias (Joshua 19:35), and a city in central Syria, modern day Hama. The 24th priestly family, Ma’azyahu (Chronicles 24:18) lived in Hamat Ariah, which is modern day Tiberias, so the poet puns the name of their location (Hamat Ariah) with the more famous Levo Hamat, modern day Hama, a place past which the Jews were exiled. Levo Hamat is often poetically taken to refer to the extreme Northern border of Israel (see Numbers 34:8, Joshua 13:5, Ezekiel 47:20 and 48:1, Amos 6:14, I Chronicles 13:5), and thus, even though there is no verse which says that the Jews were exiled past Hamat, when the form of the Kinah requires that the word Hamat appear, the content follows, and so, this word is used to refer to the location of the exile. At the same time, one cannot ignore the fact that the first time the phrase “Levo Hamat” appears in the Humash is in describing the itinerary of the spies (Numbers 13:21), a sin which was committed on the 9th of Av (Ta’anit 26b). One wonders whether the use of the word “anger” and the specific reference to Levo Hamat is also designed to hint at the sin of the Jews. Yes, we are in pain that we were exiled, and we turn to God and ask that He act in response, but there is recognition that it was the fault of the Jewish people.
Thus, the formal element provides an opportunity to make allusion to the sin of the spies, an idea also found in the third Kinah recited on the evening of Tishah Be-Av, “Be-Leil Zeh.”[18] Many of the words that are used for formal reasons become opportunities to highlight the sins of the Jewish people, one of the themes of the Kinot more generally.[19] The Kinah, more generally, makes ample reference to the sins of the Jewish people. We have already noted above how the sins of Shiloh and the rebukes of Yehezkeil appear prominently. When the Kinah, quoting Eikhah, exclaims “Hashem is righteous!,” the author accepts the notion that the fault of the Jewish people has led to the exile; they deserved everything that happened to them. The destruction of Nov is also referenced, a destruction perpetuated by one Jew against others; the Jew cannot complain that their enemies destroyed the Temple if the Jews had destroyed their own Mishkan so many years before (Sanhedrin 95a).
Fifth Formal Element: Nations that Conquered Jerusalem
When choosing how to refer to the names of the priestly families in the fourth line of each stanza, the poet chooses to refer to four of the families in such a way that the Kinah achieves a fifth formal element, the names of four nations who conquered Jerusalem: the Greeks, the Romans, the Christians, and the Arabs. This formal element always re-uses the name of the priestly family to also refer to the conquering nation, and thus one word will achieve two formal elements, simultaneously serving as the name of a priestly family and of a nation.[20]
The four families used in stanzas two, three, four, and five are Imeir, Heizir, Hapitzeitz and Petahyah (Chronicles 24:4-16), four names which do not directly connect to the four conquering nations. Their four locations, however, are Yevanit, Mamlakh, Nazareth, and Arav. The Kinah therefore uses three of those place names to allow for the lines to simultaneously pun both the name of the priestly family and the name of the nation. This is in contrast to a later Kinah of the priestly families which always uses the place name and does not seem to be focused on the nations who conquered Jerusalem.
- In stanza #2: “My eye has become ugly [with tears],[21] crippled by quicksand” (=Yevanit; in the content, the word means “quicksand,”[22] but in the form, the word puns to both the family home and Greeks).
- In stanza #4: “The hunting[23] you guarded (=Natzarta, which puns to both the family and Christians) to awaken my enemies.”
- In stanza #5: “They caused my voice to be heard in Arabia (=Arav, which is the smae word as both the name of the family and also Arabs).
In the third stanza, neither the location Mamlakh nor the family name Heizir directly refer to the Romans, but Eisav, the progenitor of Rome (Rashi to Genesis 36:43, based on Bereishit Rabbah), is compared by the Midrash to a pig of the forest, and thus the name of the family is used: “The pigs (=Hazir, pun for the family name) of the forest (= an allusion to the Romans) opened their mouths [saying], “Where is her covenant?”[24]
In another happy accident of the form, the fourth line of the second stanza now must include the word “Greek” (as one of the conquering nations), and the appropriate verse in Eikhah, which happens to refer to crying eyes. Sotah 45b already used these two words together, referring to Rabban Gamliel’s tears upon the loss of so many of his peers who had studied Greek philosophy. In that case, the line also hints to the sin of the Jewish people in studying Greek philosophy and adopting its values, instead of just referring to their being mired in quicksand, a general metaphor for tragedy.[25]
Once the fifth stanza makes reference to the Arabs, family members of the Jews who nonetheless betrayed them, the content of the stanza is crafted to support the argument already indicated by the form. The stanza is based upon the famous midrashic interpretation of Isaiah chapter 21, that the Arabs offered water to the Jews who went into exile, but never fulfilled their promise (Eikhah Rabbah 2:4).[26] It appears that the content of this stanza is set entirely by the formal considerations. The words “Givon,” “Arav,” and “deceit” must appear, and so the theme of the content becomes those that betrayed their former brethren.
The 9th of Av does not just commemorate the destruction of the Temple; it also recalls the series of enemy nations who ruled over Jerusalem. The Romans may have destroyed the Temple, but the Greeks, Christians, and Arabs subjugated the Jewish people and ruled over the city as well, and they also are recalled on the 9th of Av.
Sixth Formal Element: Narrator’s Voice and Using Direct Speech within the Poem
Most of the Tishah Be-Av Kinot describe and tell a story from the perspective of an omniscient narrator or a first person narrator. Speech is reported or shared indirectly, not quoted directly. This Kinah differs and provides quotes of what people said during the time of the destruction. As the Kinah reflects on the exile, a quote interrupts, and the reader imagines hearing those words, firsthand, from the time of the exile. This gives the Kinah an immediacy that cannot be achieved through ideas alone. The words of the speaker, who represents the Jewish people speaking in first person, are often interrupted for quotations, shouts, and interjections.
Each of the first seven stanzas has at least one interjection or quotation of speech, although the line in the stanza where the verbal speech appears changes from stanza to stanza. The interjections, with the speaker identified in parentheses along with stanza and line, are below. Words that indicate production of verbal speech are in bold:
- “‘Stop! Turn away from me,’ those that passed by me made me hear” (the passersby, 1.1).
- “He did, changed His actions, and called for crying, and he announced, ‘Upon these I am crying’” (God, 2.5-6).[27]
- “The pigs of the forest opened their mouths: ‘Where is her covenant?’” (the enemies, 3.4).
- “My nation cried out in the days of Ben-Dinai, ‘Hashem is righteous’” (the Jews, 4.5-6).
- “‘Get up! Pass!,’ in mockery they tricked me” (the Arabs, 5.5).
- “See ‘and we shall make them lost from being a nation,’ they said” (the enemies 6.5).
- “‘Rejoice [for now]!’ he made – the nation that caused me to go out – to hear (the enemies, 7.1).
Different individuals who are crucial for the story of Eikhah speak in each stanza: God, the Jews, the Jews’ primary antagonist, and the bystander nations. In this way, the Kinah, which is primarily focused on the experiences of the Jews, also creates a dramatic, dynamic narrative through the words of the other participants.
Allusions, References
A helpful postscript to this analysis of form is a consideration of the way the formal constraints drive the allusions and references used for parts of the content in the Kinah. As in almost any other Hebrew liturgical poem, this Kinah is replete with instances where whole midrashim are alluded to using a single key word or phrase, where individuals are referred to by unusual names, and where verses are partially quoted to make a deeper point. These literary elements are not formal, per se, as they relate to the content, not the structure, of the poem. But these elements do not exclusively belong under content either, as sometimes they are used to meet a formal need such as a rhyme, a quoted word from Eikhah, or any of the other formal elements discussed above. For example, Ya’akov is referred to as “tam,” the perfect one, in the first line of the eighth stanza; he is typically referred to in this way in biblical poetry, based on Genesis 25:27. In this instance, though, it is form which drives Ha-Kalir to refer to Ya’akov as tam and not by name. Because of the formal element that each line must begin with a word from Eikhah, the word tam must appear in that position, as it is the first word of the appropriate corresponding verse in Eikhah’s fourth chapter. Similarly, form drives the way Ha-Kalir chooses to refer to the comforting prophecies of Zechariah in the second stanza. They are referred to as “the vision of the son of Berekhyah,”[28] using Zechariah’s father’s name instead of Zechariah’s, because this name more closely matches the rhyme in the stanza.
A number of allusions relate specifically to the contrast between the Exodus from Egypt and the exile from Babylonia.[29] The third stanza makes two allusions to Psalm 137, a chapter that used to be recited on the 9th of Av (see Sofrim 18:4), and the Kinah works this chapter into its recollection of the events of the destruction. The two allusions below are in bold: “On the face of the Euphrates [River] her pious ones were broken./ The division of the [Yam] Suf she recalled, at the time when her foundations were made bare.” These lines develop the contrast between the salvations of the Exodus and the splitting of the sea, with the tragedy that befell the Jewish people at the Euphrates River (Psalms 137:1), when the skulls of young Jews were broken and split upon a stone (Psalms 137:9). Two bodies of water appear, and two occasions of splitting, although one ecstatic and one shockingly sad. On these two occasions foundations were laid bare: at the splitting of the sea, people saw the seabed, and, during the exile, the city was destroyed to its foundation (Psalms 137:7). Later in the stanza, the enemy taunts the Jews, saying, “Where is the covenant?” [30] When the sea was split, the covenant between God and the Jewish people was clear to see, and now it appears lost. This idea is again returned to in the fifth stanza, when the jewelry that reflects the giving of the Torah is removed: “From my jewelry[31] they have made me bare.” In this short Kinah of nine stanzas and 54 lines, at least every other line makes an allusion.[32]
Concluding Thoughts
None of the English Kinot presently available on the market undertake a formal analysis of the Kinah like this one; sometimes they mention one or two formal elements in the introduction to the Kinah, but none mention the full range of formal constraints used in the composition of the Kinah. Today’s Kinah experience is mostly focused on the content of the Kinot, not the construction.
Still, there are two reasons to continue to study form. First, part of the artistic beauty and emotional experience of the Kinah is appreciating the complexity of the form; the warm feeling in seeing the numerous connections is worthy itself, and the actual text of the Kinah should not be lost in extracting a few ideas of content from the Kinah. Second, one should remember that the form itself often tells a story. The form of this Kinah recounts much history: stages of Temples following exiles and rebuilding, the continuity from the time of Eikhah until today, the continued connection with the priestly families despite many years of distance, the voices of the various characters in the story, and the four nations who successively conquered Jerusalem over the course of Jewish history.
In the verse that follows the Arab conquest of Jerusalem, the Hebrew name Yehezkeil appears in the spot where the next victor of Jerusalem would appear. Let us hope that this Tishah Be-Av, the next nation to serve God in the “Devir,” on the Temple Mount, not be the Greeks, Romans, Christians or Arabs, but rather the Jews, in fulfillment of the vision of our priestly prophet Yehezkeil (43:7-9):
This is the place of My throne, and the place of the palms of my feet, that I shall dwell there, in the midst of the Jewish people, forever..
[1] There is considerable controversy regarding exactly when and where he lived. For a brief summary, see Ephraim Kanarfogel, “The History of the Tosafists and their Literary Output According to Rabbi Soloveitchik’s Interpretations of the Qinot for Tisha B-Av,” in Scholarly Man of Faith, Ephraim Kanarfogel & Dov Schwartz (eds.), (New York: The Michael Scharf Publication Trust of the Yeshiva University Press, 2018), 75-107 (relevant section 80-83).
[2] This formal element, along with the one that follows, are the only two formal elements that are noted in the Artscroll Kinot, Rosenfeld’s Kinot, and the Koren Mesorat Harav Kinot: Avrohom Chaim Feuer and Avie Gold, The Complete Artscroll Tisha B’av Service (Brooklyn, NY: Mesorah Publications, 1991), 152-157; Abraham Rosenfeld, Authorized Kinot for the Ninth of Av (New York: Judaica Press, 1999), 91-92; and The Koren Mesorat Harav Kinot, Simon Posner Ed. (OU Press: New York, 2010), 194-215.
[3] The word “homarmaru” is a rare biblical word, appearing twice in Eikhah (1:20 and 2:11) and one time in the entire rest of Tanakh (Job 16:16). The form of the word, po’al’al, suggests that it relates to a color like the other biblical words that take that form (Leviticus 13:49, Song of Songs 1:6), a shade of red, based on the Arabic (Saadia Gaon; see Ibn Ezra). At the same time, the first two letters of the root suggest that it relates to being heated, shriveled, fermented, becoming cement, or undergoing another a chemical process (like h-m-d, h-m-tz, h-m-r, h-m-h, h-m-m; see Psalm 75:9, Sanhedrin 7:2, Hulin 3:3). Lastly, the context suggests a third, different translation: churned, twisted, or turned, as many translate it (Targum), possibly relating to the word for pile (see Exodus 8:10, Numbers 11:32).
Earlier in the stanza, this word rhymes with the word “khamaru,” meaning shriveled as a result of the heat; see Rashi, Genesis 43:30, and see also Hosea 11:8 and Eikhah 5:10. This root k-m-r is different from the root h-m-r, although they are similar in pronunciation, and some do connect the two words.
[4] In Eikhah, the letters of the alphabet begin verses in order, consecutively, with the exception of the letters ayin and pei. These letters appear in conventional order, ayin first, in the first chapter only, while pei appears before ayin in the following three chapters. The Kinah groups verses by initial word, and therefore all of the verses that begin with ayin appear together. The Talmud noticed this phenomenon (Sanhedrin 104b) and gives a midrashic explanation for it. It is beyond the scope of this essay to discuss other approaches to this discrepancy, informed by archeological findings.
[5] This piyyut is printed in Rosenfeld, 75-80, and in Daniel Goldschmidt, The Order of the Kinnot for the Ninth of Av [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1972), 147-154.
[6] The first two of these, related to the Temple’s travels and the priestly families, are noted in Goldschmidt’s Kinot, although the third, about the enemy nations, is not.
[7] As the Kinah has eight stanzas, but there were only seven locations, the eighth stanza has no key format-word in this position and just has a regular line with content alone.
[8] Ivuy comes from the root a-v-h, which means to want or desire, based on Psalms 132:13. This root is also used to refer to the Temple in the Kinah “Zekhor et asher asah.”
[9] One assumes this means the sins perpetrated at Shiloh at the start of the book of Samuel, which had not yet been expiated. Goldschmidt connects this line to Jeremiah 8:12.
[10] The Kinah “Lekha Hashem Ha-Tzedakah” also makes reference to the range of locations that once housed God’s presence, all now destroyed.
[11] See Michael Avi-Yonah, “A List of Priestly Courses from Caesarea,” Israel Exploration Journal 12, no. 2 (1962): 137-139. See also Goldschmidt, 10.
[12] Another Kinah, “Havatzelet Ha-Sharon,” which appears four Kinot later, also goes through the priestly families, listing all 24 in a clearer part of the poem, the final words of each stanza.
[13] The root b-l-g, meaning to overcome, appears as a verb in four places in Tanakh: Amos 5:9, Psalms 39:14, and Job 9:27 and 10:20. A noun that seems to derive from this root also appears in the haftarah for the morning of the 9th of Av, Jeremiah 8:18.
[14] A word for the underworld (see Berakhot 15b). In biblical Hebrew, the word refers to a mountain (see Psalms 68:15, Judges 9:48). This word also appears with the same meaning in the piyyut “Ma’oz Tzur.” For more on “Ma’oz Tzur,” see my recent Lehrhaus article. A later line in the stanza uses the word Havhav, which is also a word for the underworld, based on Proverbs 30:15-16.
[15] This priestly family appears in the third line, however, and not the fourth as it should be.
[16] This phrase is also a pun, with anger (heimah) appearing besides the place (Hamat).
[17] Many of the Kinot include the Assyrian conquest as part of the mourning of the 9th of Av, even though the day is actually focused on the Babylonian conquest which destroyed the Temple and Judea more than a century later. When using the word “Nov,” one of the locations of the central altar, the Kinah makes note of the Assyrians gathered in Nov on route to Jerusalem. They were on route to destroy the Temple, although they failed to do so. The fourth of the evening Kinot, “Shomron,” also discusses the exile of the Northern tribes, although the exile is attributed to the wrong King, Tiglat Pileser, instead of Shalmaneser. See my Isaiah and His Contemporaries, (New York: Kodesh Press, 2022) 162-171.
[18] This idea is also expressed in the antepenultimate line of the antepenultimate stanza, which reads, “You heard how he even prepared (zemorot,) grape branches of anger, to sweep me away.” What are “branches of anger?” A “zemorah” is a grape branch, as is evidenced from the five times the word appears in Tanakh: Numbers 13:23 (the sin of the spies), Nahum 2:3, Isaiah 17:10, Ezekiel 15:2, Isaiah 17:10, and Ezekiel 8:17, where the grape branches appear together with anger. The author of the Kinah clearly intended for the word to mean “branches,” as they are used to sweep away, using a broom made of branches (Isaiah 14:23, Megilah 18a). Most of the commentaries to Ezekiel translate the word differently, but these other translations in the context of Ezekiel (smells, knives, songs) are not intended by the author of the Kinah in this context. The argument of the Kinah is that the enemy has even prepared the grape branches of anger, the grape branches previously used for the sin of the spies which sparked God’s anger, to use them to sweep the Jews away.
[19] The first of the evening Kinot, “Zekhor Hashem Meh Hayah Lanu,” conveys this idea as well, as does the coda to “Im Tokhalnah.” I briefly discuss the second of these two in this Lehrhaus article.
[20] The Kinah “Eikh Tenahamuni Hevel” lists the four nations to exile the Jews: Babylonia, Media, Greece and Rome, which is also referred to as Edom. The list in that Kinah, which is a slightly different list of nations than in this Kinah, is based on the predictions of Daniel.
[21] The Hebrew reads “eini me’olelet”; it is challenging to translate the second of the two words, me’olelet. That root, in noun form, (oleil), can refer to young children (as in Eikhah 1:5, 2:19), possibly young animals (possibly in the Kinah “Az Ba-halokh Yirmiyahu,” based on the related adjective in Genesis 33:13), or leftover unpicked inferior fruit (such as in Obadiah 1:5). In verb form, it can mean to pick said fruit (as in Leviticus 19:10), to mock (as in Exodus 10:2; see Rashi), or to act (as in Eikhah 1:12 and 1:22). What does the verb mean in Eikhah 3:51? Rashi to Eikhah and Sotah 49b says it means that the eyes have become ugly or unkempt because of tears. Ibn Ezra says it means to act or cause. Somewhat interestingly, though the phrase “eini olelah” appears in Eikah 3:51, the word “eini,” here, is actually taken from Eikhah 3:49, to follow the formal pattern.
[22] This word appears twice in Tanakh to refer to mud or quicksand (Psalms 40:3; 69:3. The common noun “yavein,” quicksand, is a pun for the proper noun “Yavan,” which is both the biblical Hebrew word to refer to Greece or Ionia, and the name of the location of the family Imeir. Some archeological evidence suggests that they lived in a different place, Kefar Nimra, but Ha-Kalir is consistent in both of his Kinot that this family came from Yevanit.
[23] What is the hunting that God guarded and protected? Goldschmit thinks God “guarded” the punishment for Saul hunting and killing the priests of Nov in the prior line. It may also be that God protected the enemies who were engaged in the hunting of the Jews, to ensure that those enemies would be successful in punishing them.
[24] For the translation of this word, see n. 30.
[25] The Kinah earlier referred to the family of Bilgah, which, according to Sukkah 56b, may have been guilty of marrying into the Greeks and adopting their value system. It is unlikely that the translation of the Torah into Greek is referenced here, as Posner, Kinot (205) argues, for the reasons I detailed here.
[26] I discuss this midrash in more detail in my Isaiah and His Contemporaries, 267. This story is also mentioned in the later Kinah, “Im Tokhalnah.”
[27] In the Kinah, these words are pronounced by God, although in Eikhah 1:16 it is Jerusalem who is crying. The idea that God, Himself borrows the language of Jerusalem highlights a continued connection even in a time of perceived distance. Though He punished them, He then acted differently (“niham”) and with affection towards the Jews, indicating that it was time to cry for their loss.
[28] One assumes that this is the vision of the final page of Tractate Makkot.
[29] This theme is returned to in two later Kinot, “Ve-Attah Amarta” and “Eish Tukad Be-Kirbi.”
[30] The Hebrew reads “ayei hasideha.” Some prefer to translate the phrase “where are her pious ones,” although that phrase does not appear in Tanakh, but a similar phrase “where are your kindnesses/covenant” does appear at Psalms 89:50. It is hard to understand why the enemy would search for the pious Jews, but easier to understand why they might shout, mockingly, “Where has the covenant gone!” This translation further connects this line with the Exodus from Egypt that appears earlier in the stanza, the moment when God reaffirmed his covenant with the Jewish people (see Exodus 6:4-5). I discuss the translation of h-s-d as covenant in Isaiah and His Contemporaries (New York: Kodesh Press, 2022).
[31] The word for jewelry, “adi,” is a rare word in Tanakh, and often refers to the Exodus and the giving of the Torah. The word appears a mere fourteen times in Tanakh, three regarding the giving of the Torah (Exodus 33:4-6), and three times in Yehezkeil’s parable of the Exodus (16:7-11). In Ezekiel, it probably is intentionally alluding to the Exodus, making contrast between how the wonderful moments of the past are replaced with exile and destruction.
[32] The list includes: Son of Bercheya (Zechariah 1:1, 2.2), miracles of Gilgal (Joshua 10:11, 2.3), Yevanit (Sotah 45b, 2.4), “called for crying” (Isaiah 22:12, in a chapter taken by some to refer to the fall of Jerusalem, 2.5), Euphrates (Psalms 137:1, and possibly Midrash Tehilim ad loc. 3.1), Suf, splitting of the sea ( Exodus Ch. 14, 3.2), “broken” (Psalms 137:9, 3.1), “stripped bare” (Psalms 137:7, 3.2), sin of Shiloh (II Samuel 2, 3.3), “pigs of the forest” (referring to the Romans, as discussed above, 3.4), gathered in Nov (Isaiah 10:32, 4.3), son of Dinai (a known murderer, see Sotah 47a, Josephus, Wars 2:12:4, 4.5), “my jewelry,” (referring to the giving of the Torah, Exodus 33:6, 5.1), Arabia (Eikhah Rabbah 2:4, 5.4), sin and anger (Psalms 10:14, 6.3), “lost from being a nation” (Psalms 83:5, 6.5), “trample my courtyards” (Isaiah 1:12, 7.2), singers, (a way to refer to the Levites, 7.3), branches (Numbers 13:24, 7.4), “branches of anger” (Ezekiel 8:17, 7.4), “sweep” (Isaiah 14:32, 7.4), gravel (Eikhah 3:16, Eikhah Rabbah interpreting Ezekiel 12:3, 7.5), “perfect one,” (a nickname of Yaakov 8.1), engraved ( Pirkei de-Rebbe Eliezer 35), Tzalmon, underworld (8.3), Havhav, underworld (8.4), cup (Isaiah 51:23, 8.5), Levo Hamat (Numbers 13:21, 9.2), Halah & Havor (Kings 2:17:6, 9.3), “Remember, Hashem, what happened to us” (Eikhah 5.1).
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