Hebrew Bible: Lamentations

Around 586 BCE, Babylonians captured and destroyed Jerusalem, slaughtering or exiling the majority of the population. The 'Book of Lamentations' contains five poetic laments about this event.

'How lonely sits the city that was full of people! How like a widow has she become, she who was great among the nations!'

The event was seen as an act of God's wrath, punishing the sins of the Israelites:

'The Lord has become like an enemy; he has swallowed up Israel; he has swallowed up all its palaces; he has laid in ruins its strongholds, and he has multiplied in the daughter of Judah mourning and lamentation.'

The laments try to make sense of horrific suffering:

'My eyes are spent with weeping; my stomach churns; my bile is poured out to the ground because of the destruction of the daughter of my people, because infants and babies faint in the streets of the city. They cry to their mothers, “Where is bread and wine?” as they faint like a wounded man in the streets of the city, as their life is poured out on their mothers' bosom. In the dust of the streets lie the young and the old; my young women and my young men have fallen by the sword; you have killed them in the day of your anger, slaughtering without pity.'

Sometimes, the poet gives up hope:

'I am the man who has seen affliction under the rod of his wrath; he has driven and brought me into darkness without any light; surely against me he turns his hand again and again the whole day long.
He has made my flesh and my skin waste away; he has broken my bones; he has besieged and enveloped me with bitterness and tribulation; he has made me dwell in darkness like the dead of long ago. I have forgotten what happiness is; so I say, “My endurance has perished; so has my hope from the Lord.”

And then regains it:

'But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning'

In Judaism, God is responsible for both good and evil (hence why he kills children). The Jewish Satan is a servant of God.

'Who has spoken and it came to pass, unless the Lord has commanded it? Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that good and bad come? Why should a living man complain, a man, about the punishment of his sins?'

There's a lot of crying:

“My eyes will flow without ceasing, without respite, until the Lord from heaven looks down and sees; my eyes cause me grief at the fate of all the daughters of my city. And a lot of dead and dying children: 'The tongue of the nursing infant sticks to the roof of its mouth for thirst; the children beg for food, but no one gives to them. Happier were the victims of the sword than the victims of hunger,
who wasted away, pierced by lack of the fruits of the field. The hands of compassionate women
have boiled their own children; they became their food'

When the Hebrew God gets angry, he doesn't hold back:

'The Lord gave full vent to his wrath; he poured out his hot anger, and he kindled a fire in Zion
that consumed its foundations.'

It is one of the bleakest books in the Bible. There are only short bursts of hope. It concludes with the possibility that God might be angry forever, and the suffering will not end:

'Our skin is hot as an oven with the burning heat of famine. Women are raped in Zion, young women in the towns of Judah. Princes are hung up by their hands; no respect is shown to the elders. Young men are compelled to grind at the mill, and boys stagger under loads of wood. The old men have left the city gate, the young men their music. The joy of our hearts has ceased; our dancing has been turned to mourning. The crown has fallen from our head; woe to us, for we have sinned!

But you, O Lord, reign forever; your throne endures to all generations. Why do you forget us forever,
why do you forsake us for so many days? Restore us to yourself, O Lord, that we may be restored!
Renew our days as of old—  unless you have utterly rejected us, and you remain exceedingly angry with us.'