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When Exiles Became Orphans and Still Prayed

Eikhah Rabbah reads Lamentations 5 as a final prayer where dispossession, orphanhood, Hadrian's decree, and failed alliances meet one question for God.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. The Land That Belonged to God First
  2. The Redeemer Who Would Know Orphanhood
  3. Hadrian's Order and the Hunt for Hair
  4. The Oil That Went to Egypt and the Grain That Came Back
  5. Why Do You Forget Us

The Land That Belonged to God First

Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers. Jeremiah called the land ours. Isaiah called the Temple the house of our holiness and splendor. Then Asaf came forward and corrected them both.

It is not our inheritance. It is God's inheritance.

Eikhah Rabbah taught the exiles how to pray by changing that pronoun. If the land was only Israel's, exile was a national loss, a political defeat, a military failure. Nations lost territory all the time. But if the Temple and the land were God's portion, then exile placed a different kind of argument before heaven. The people were not only saying look what happened to us. They were saying look what happened to Yours.

The turning over of the land was like the overturning of Sodom: total, irreversible, the kind of ruin that did not leave a wall standing for the next occupant to use. And it had happened to what belonged to God. The prayer worked because it refused to let the destruction be merely Israel's problem.

The Redeemer Who Would Know Orphanhood

We have become orphans, fatherless; our mothers are like widows. Rabbi Berekhya said in the name of Rabbi Levi that God answered this cry directly. "You wept and called yourselves orphans before Me. As you live, the redeemer I am destined to raise for you in Media will not have a father and a mother."

The complaint became the credential. The very condition Israel mourned was the condition the future redeemer would share. The midrash identified this figure as Mordecai, whose parents had died before the events of the Esther story, leaving him to raise his cousin Esther as his own daughter. The orphanhood that Israel named as its wound in Lamentations was already part of the biography of the man God had marked as the instrument of rescue.

The prayer was not futile. It was already being answered in the details of a story that had not yet fully unfolded.

Hadrian's Order and the Hunt for Hair

To our necks we have been pursued. The midrash connected the verse to a specific humiliation. Hadrian, whose bones the midrash cursed, commanded that if his soldiers found a Jew with hair, they were to remove his head from his body. Defying the order of compulsory shaving meant death. The pursuit to the neck was not metaphorical. It was the decree of a man who wanted to mark conquered bodies with visible signs of subjugation, and who used the threat of decapitation to enforce the marking.

Then Nebuchadnezzar's commander Nevuzaradan received a different instruction. "The God of these people accepts penitents," Nebuchadnezzar said. "His hand is outstretched to accept those who return. When you conquer them, do not kill them all." The contrast was not in Israel's favor in the moment of Nebuchadnezzar's siege, but it placed a limit on the destruction that Hadrian's decree did not acknowledge. Even conquest could recognize that this people's God was not finished with them.

The Oil That Went to Egypt and the Grain That Came Back

We extended a hand to Egypt and Assyria to be sated with bread. The northern kingdom had built an elaborate trade network before their exile. They sent oil south to Egypt and brought back grain. They forwarded the grain to Babylon. The web of trade and obligation was meant to be strategic insurance. If enemies came, Egypt would be indebted. If Babylon threatened, the grain flow would matter.

The strategy failed. The alliances that were supposed to buffer Israel from the great powers did not hold when the great powers decided to move. The midrash did not moralize at length over the failure. It named it: the hand extended to Egypt and Assyria in hunger was the result of having built relationships with those powers that were finally about economic survival rather than loyalty, and economic relationships dissolve when the weaker party has nothing left to offer.

Why Do You Forget Us

Jeremiah used four words for divine abandonment: spurning, rejection, forsaking, forgetting. Rabbi Yehoshua bar Avin traced each one to its answer. Spurning and rejection he addressed himself, finding Moses' voice in Leviticus: "I did not spurn them and I did not reject them." Forsaking and forgetting, the final pair, were answered by Isaiah: "these too may forget, but I will not forget you."

The prayer at the end of Lamentations moved through every available word for abandonment and found for each one a counter-claim already embedded in the tradition. Jeremiah had not written a document of permanent despair. He had written a series of complaints, each of which the tradition had already prepared an answer for, in Moses and in Isaiah and in the shape of a redeemer who would be an orphan so that orphaned Israel could recognize him when he came.

ExileOrphansPrayerRedemptionEikhah Rabbah
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From the tradition

Sources

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The texts this telling draws on, in full. Open a card to read inline, or expand it for a wider, quieter read.

Eikhah Rabbah 5:2Eikhah Rabbah

Eikhah Rabbah, the midrash on the Book of Lamentations, reads the mourning verse "Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers, our houses to foreigners" (Lamentations 5:2) and asks what kind of "turning over" this is. Its answer is brutal: it is "like the overturning of Sodom" (Deuteronomy 29:22), a total and irreversible ruin, not a temporary exchange of tenants.

The midrash then stages a quiet argument among the prophets over what to even call the lost city and its Temple. Jeremiah, the voice of Lamentations, calls it "our inheritance," naming it as Israel's own portion. Isaiah reaches higher and calls it "the House of our holiness and splendor" (Isaiah 64:10), claiming it as the place of Israel's glory before God.

Then Asaf comes forward and corrects them both. He says it is not "our inheritance" and not "the House of our holiness and splendor." The destruction is so severe that Israel can no longer speak of it as theirs at all. Instead Asaf addresses God directly, as it is written: "God, nations have invaded Your inheritance; they have impurified Your holy Temple, rendered Jerusalem ruins" (Psalms 79:1). The grief is reframed and made larger. The loss is not chiefly Israel's loss of a possession; it is an assault on what belongs to God. By handing the claim back to Heaven, Asaf turns the lament into a plea: if the ruined House is Yours, then the injury demands Your response.

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Eikhah Rabbah 5:3Eikhah Rabbah

“We have become orphans, fatherless; our mothers are like widows” (Lamentations 5:3). This verse belongs to the closing chapter of Eikhah, the cry of a people stripped of protection after the destruction of the Temple, abandoned as children left without a father and wives left without a husband. Eikhah Rabbah, the midrashic commentary on Lamentations, reads Israel’s lament as the opening of a divine answer. Rabbi Berekhya said in the name of Rabbi Levi that the Holy One blessed be He responded to Israel’s words: ‘You wept and said before Me, “We have become orphans, fatherless.” As you live, the redeemer that I am destined to establish for you in Media will not have a father and a mother.’

The midrash turns the complaint into a promise. The very condition Israel mourns, orphanhood, will be mirrored in the savior God raises up in the Persian-Median exile. That is what is written: “He was raising Hadasa, she is Esther his uncle’s daughter, because she had no father or mother” (Esther 2:7). Esther, the orphan girl raised by her kinsman Mordecai, becomes the deliverer of her people in the days of Ahasuerus. The rabbis thus read measure for measure as comfort rather than punishment: the nation’s grief at being fatherless is answered by a fatherless redeemer whose own orphanhood becomes the instrument of their rescue.

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Eikhah Rabbah 5:5Eikhah Rabbah

“To our necks we have been pursued; we are exhausted, and we have no respite” (Lamentations 5:5).“To our necks we have been pursued.” Hadrian, may his bones be crushed, commanded and said: ‘If we come and we find hair on a Jew, we will remove his head from him.’5Hadrian decreed that the Jews must have their heads shaved as a sign of degradation. Defying this decree was punishable by death. That is what is written: “To our necks we have been pursued.”Another matter, “to our necks we have been pursued,” it is because we betrayed with our necks on a day of trouble. “We are exhausted, and we have no respite.” Nebuchadnezzar, may his bones be crushed, commanded Nevuzaradan and said to him: ‘The God of these accepts penitents, and His hand is outstretched to accept penitents. When you conquer them, do not allow them to pray, so they will not repent and their God will then have mercy on them, and this man6Nebuchadnezzar is referring to himself. will have his downfall with black face.7In shame. Do not underestimate them.’ When he conquered them, when one of them would stand, he would take him, dismember him, and cast him before them. They would be forced to walk against their will.8They were not permitted to stop walking. This is implied in the verse “we have no respite” (Etz Yosef). Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said: Nevuzaradan is Aryokh. Why is his name called Aryokh? It is because he would roar at the captives like a lion [arye] until they reached the Euphrates. When they reached the Euphrates, he said to his legions: ‘Allow them to rest, as from here on, their God will no longer return to them.’ That is what is written: “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat and also wept” (Psalms 137:1). Until there, we did not sit.

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Eikhah Rabbah 5:6Eikhah Rabbah

The midrash interprets a confession from the closing chapter of Lamentations: "We extended a hand to Egypt, Assyria, to be sated with bread" (Lam. 5:6). The verse describes a humiliating dependence, a people reaching out to the great powers merely to obtain food. The sage explains what lay behind this entanglement by recalling the policy of the Ten Tribes of the northern kingdom of Israel before their fall. They would send oil down to Egypt and bring back grain, which they would then forward to Babylon, building a web of trade and obligation with the surrounding empires.

The purpose, the midrash explains, was strategic insurance. By keeping both Egypt and Assyria supplied and beholden, the northern kingdom hoped that if enemies came against them, these powerful patrons would be there to assist them. The sage anchors this reading in the prophet Hosea, who rebuked exactly this double-dealing: "They seal a covenant with Assyria and oil is transported to Egypt" (Hos. 12:2). The lesson is a sharp critique of misplaced trust. Rather than rely on the God of the covenant, the Ten Tribes courted foreign empires with gifts and treaties, and that very dependence became part of their undoing, a hand extended for bread that ended in exile rather than security.

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Eikhah Rabbah 5:20Eikhah Rabbah

“Why do You forget us forever, forsake us for so long?” (Lamentations 5:20).“Why do You forget us forever?” Rabbi Yehoshua bar Avin said: Jeremiah employed four expressions: Spurning, rejection, forsaking, and forgetting. Spurning and rejection, as it is written: “Did You spurn Judah, did Your soul reject Zion?” (Jeremiah 14:19). And he was answered by Moses, as it is written: “I did not spurn them and I did not reject them” (Leviticus 26:44). Forsaking and forgetting, as it is written: “Why do You forget us forever, forsake us for so long?” And he was answered by Isaiah, as it is written: “These too may forget, but I will not forget you” (Isaiah 49:15).Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said: Jeremiah employed four expressions: Spurning, anger, forsaking, and forgetting. Spurning, he answered himself, as it is written: “So said the Lord: If the heavens above can be measured and the foundations of the earth below probed, I too will spurn all the descendants of Israel because of everything that they did, the utterance of the Lord” (Jeremiah 31:37).27Since the heavens and earth cannot be measured, Israel will not be spurned. Anger, he was answered by Isaiah, as it is stated: “For I will not contend forever and I will not be eternally angry” (Isaiah 57:16).

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