have optimistic endings. In contrast, the book of Lamentations was written before the return/rebuilding and thus contains only lamentations and pleas to God with no response or resolution.

Beginning with the reality of disaster, Lamentations concludes with the bitter possibility that God may have finally rejected Israel. Sufferers in the face of grief are not urged to have confidence in the goodness of God; in fact, God is accountable for the disaster. The poet acknowledges that this suffering is a just punishment.