Chapter 520Wherefore dost thou forget us for ever, and forsake us so long time?21Turn thou us unto thee, O LORD, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old.22But thou hast utterly rejected us; thou art very wroth against us.
It is called in the Hebrew canon 'Eikhah, meaning "How," being the formula for the commencement of a song of wailing. It is the first word of the book (see 2 Sam. 1:19-27). The Septuagint adopted the name rendered "Lamentations" (or "Threnoi Hieremiou", abbreviated "Thren." in some Latin commentaries, from the Greek threnoi = Hebrew qinoth) now in common use, to denote the character of the book, in which the prophet mourns over the desolations brought on Jerusalem and the Holy Land by the Chaldeans. In the Hebrew Bible (the Tanakh) it is placed among the Ketuvim, the Writings.