Why Blame Esau’s Daughter?

Lamentations 4:22

When it comes to grief mid rubble -- there’s often too much of it to account for - and it’s the poets’ role to try and make memories of mourning, using words to account for the fallen walls and syllables to commemorate every soul. The 4th chapter of Lamentations begins with the first word of the scroll - the howl of how. It also repeats the format of 22 verses - one per each of the Hebrew letters. Within this order is the chaos of the degradation that has befallen the population in the last days before destruction.

Dr. Yael Ziegler writes about this painful chapter:

“Chapter 4 veers away from Chapter 3’s story of the individual, returning the book to its account of national tragedy. Two-thirds the length of the previous chapter, chapter 4 has the same twenty-two verses as chapters 1 and 2, but each verse contains just two sentences instead of three. Brevity indicates despair; there is not much left to report, speech seems increasingly pointless. Jerusalem can no longer sustain its starving populace; the city’s fall and the exile of her inhabitants appear imminent.

Chapter 4 focuses attention on a wide swath of Jerusalem’s populace – its children, mothers, Nazirites, prophets, and priests. By singling out particular groups, the chapter offers a glimpse of individual experiences, a panoply of human tragedy. Vivid metaphors merge with a graphic portrait of suffering, focusing particularly on the horrors of famine. In its wake, Jerusalem’s inhabitants treat precious jewels and once-cherished children with similar indifference, mothers abandon their humanity, and corpses litter Jerusalem’s streets. Details of the famine assault our senses; we visualize the infants’ parched tongues and we hear the children’s desperate pleas for bread.

Despair colors this chapter in dark hues; the lustrous gold, shining white, and rosy-cheeked vigor of Jerusalem’s bright past fade, giving way to black tones, the shadowy color of despondency. Blackened by hunger and desiccated by thirst, people no longer recognize their fellows. Lack of recognition metaphorically suggests antisocial behavior; society breaks down as hunger predominates, and every individual seeks his own survival at the expense of another.”

This grim chapter disintegrates into the destruction but it includes two more important notes worthwhile noticing. The first is a condemnation of the crimes for which the city fell - the corruption of its civic and religious leaders. Both prophets and priests are indicted in this chapter for negating their duties and colluding with power to discard the people’s needs.

And beyond the blame - the chapter ends with a tragic note of future thinking - insisting that there will be justice and there will be vengeance.

Those who did this to us will one day pay, the chapter claims -- but who is cited here as the enemies? Verse 22 pours wrath not on Babylon - but on Edom:

תַּם־עֲוֺנֵךְ בַּת־צִיּוֹן לֹא יוֹסִיף לְהַגְלוֹתֵךְ פָּקַד עֲוֺנֵךְ בַּת־אֱדוֹם גִּלָּה עַל־חַטֹּאתָיִךְ׃

ת Your iniquity, Fair Zion, is expiated;

You will be exiled no longer.

Your iniquity, Fair Edom, God will note,

And uncover your sins.

Lamentations 4:22

An unexpected antagonist takes center stage here —not Babylon, the conqueror, but Edom, the neighboring nation to the east, the people of Esau, the ancestral brother turned betrayer. Or perhaps sister — in both cases here - Zion and Edom are referred to as daughters — translated here as ‘fair’ - but more accurately as ‘Daughter of Zion’ and ‘Daughter of Edom"‘

Why Edom? Why does the poet's grief transform into fury against this neighboring nation, rather than solely against the direct destroyers of Jerusalem?

The answer lies in both history and myth. Historically, according to several sources, Edom aided Babylon in Jerusalem’s downfall. The Prophet Obadiah rebukes them sharply: “On that day you stood aloof while strangers carried off his wealth… you were like one of them.”

The Edomites didn’t just watch; they actively assisted, capturing fleeing Judeans and handing them over (Obadiah 1:14). The Babylonian siege was brutal, but Edom’s betrayal stung deeper—like a knife in the back from family.

And family they were. Edom, the descendants of Esau, were kin to Jacob’s children. The tension between brothers is an old and painful one, stretching back to Genesis. The competition, the reversal of power, Jacob's stealing of the birthright, the estrangement—these themes repeat in history, to become Edom's refusal to let Israel pass through their land on their way to Canaan (Numbers 20:14-21) to their role in Jerusalem’s devastation.

Modern scholars, like Jacob Milgrom, suggest that Edom became a mythic stand-in for all external threats that once came from within.

The Book of Lamentations names Edom because betrayal by kin is an even greater tragedy than defeat by an enemy. And so, Eicha warns: not only about destruction but about the perils of fratricide—the way the brother can become the Other, and how, without reckoning, history repeats itself.

By blaming the prophets and priests, as well as Edom, this chapter is indeed a grim reminder of the many ways we are torn from within. When brother turns other, when family feuds tear us apart - the enemy beyond the gates finds them wide open.

What will it take for us to internalize these bitter life lessons and find the ways to reconcile within - before blaming whoever the other side is for our own woes?

Image: Dikla Laor's Biblical Women Series

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