Tikvah
Editors’ Pick

July 20, 2015

The Book of Lamentations’ Unusual Hebrew Alphabet

A possible explanation.

The book of Lamentations (Eikhah in Hebrew), read in synagogue on Tisha b’Av, consists of five chapters. Four of them are structured as alphabetical acrostics; that is, each verse starts with a different letter of the Hebrew alphabet starting with aleph and proceeding in order. In three of these chapters, however, one letter is out of place: the letter peh proceedes ayin—the equivalent of p preceding o. Mitchell First suggests a possible explanation:

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