The fifth and final chapter of the book of Eikhah (Lamentations) makes for excruciating reading. Defeated and degraded, forced to endure the horrors of occupation and oppression, the people are convinced that God has forgotten and abandoned them. The chapter is relentless in portraying the people’s sense of humiliation and despair; the one glimmer of hope that emerges turns out to be tenuous and fleeting, another reminder of the depths of their misery. The pain conveyed by the text is unremitting.