They have made it a desolation; desolate, it mourns to me. The whole land is made desolate, but no one lays it to heart. (Jer. 12.11)1
War can be described as ‘the occasion of highly organized, premeditated, and collective acts of devastation and killing’.2 In the endeavour to gain control and power over an enemy other, acts of war target communities and their means of support, with destruction of place enacted in order to force surrender and submission. The intentional destruction of place functions as a multivalent act, at once destroying the actual means of human survival (food supply and shelter) and at the same time disrupting the cultural and psychological attachments to place that frequently bind communities together. The destruction of place targets all aspects of human wellbeing – the physical, the cultural and the emotional – in the quest for power and domination.
Land and the physical environment are inevitably implicated in the destruction. While cities are the most frequent target, other environmental damage and devastation also occurs. This damage may be considered as either collateral damage, the land being decimated as a result of the movement and actions of combatants over the land, or as the direct target of intentional acts of destruction.
Within the Hebrew Bible (HB), descriptions of the decimation of land / the environment through warfare are an all too frequent occurrence, enacted both by and against Israel and Judah. Under the empires of both
1. All biblical references are from the unless otherwise stated.
2. K. Hewitt, ‘Place Annihilation: Area Bombing and the Fate of Urban Places’,
Assyria and Babylon, Israel and Judah endured repeated episodes of invasion and widespread destruction. The Assyrian king Sennacherib, for example, rerecorded his tactics against Judah in 701 as follows: ‘As for Hezekiah, the Judean, I besieged forty-six of his fortified walled cities and surrounding smaller towns, which were without number. Using packed- down ramps and applying battering rams, infantry attacks by mines, breeches, and siege machines, I conquered them.’3 While the Assyrians failed to conquer Jerusalem in 701 , the Babylonian army succeeded in doing so in 586 . The description of the defeat in 2 Kgs 25 is terse and concise, focusing on the fate of Jerusalem and saying nothing of the consequences for the environs of the city or the remainder of the land.4 Given what is known of ancient warfare, however, it is evident that there would have been significant environmental destruction. Archaeological evidence supports widespread decline in much of the region.5
Two central texts for understanding this time are the books of Jeremiah and Lamentations. Within Jeremiah the fate of the land is a significant motif, seen especially in those texts where the land is personified as a victim of human action, described as mourning and desolate (Jer. 4.5–31; 9.9–10; 12.7–13). Lamentations, however, is much more concerned with human mourning and desolation (Lam. 1.4, 13, 16; 3.11; 4.5), and refer- ences to the fate of the land beyond the city are harder to discern. In their differing ways, however, both texts attest to the reality of the destruction of both the built and the ‘natural’ environments and the impact of this decimation on those human communities against whom war was targeted. That environmental destruction had an impact on the residents of cities / nations, and was thus an effective weapon in ancient warfare, is attested to through the language used to describe the state of both the land and its human inhabitants. One such word is םמשׁ and its derivatives, a word
whose closest English equivalent is desolate / desolation. As in English,
םמשׁ can denote both geographical and physical destruction as well as
psychological states.6
3. COS 2.119B: 303
4. Throughout the discussion I am concerned with Jerusalem as place rather than Jerusalem as a term which refers to the people who live within the city.
5. O. Lipschits, The Fall and Rise of Jerusalem (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2005); A. Faust, Judah in the Neo-Babylonian Period: The Archaeology of Devasta- tion (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2003).
6. TDOT 15:239. Examples of physical destruction include Pss. 69.5; 79.7; Isa. 33.8; 54.3, while psychological states are clearly implied in 2 Sam. 13.20; Ezra 9.3, 4; Job 16.7; Pss. 40.15; 143.4; Isa. 59.16.
That םמשׁ is able to denote both a human response and geographical /
physical destruction speaks to the commonality of material existence shared between human and other-than-human. The discussion which follows builds on presuppositions concerning the centrality of both embodiment and emplacement for human being. Martin Heidegger argues that ‘place is where humans dwell and encounter the other, human and nonhuman alike’.7 There is a deep intertwining and interconnection between being and place such that ‘[p]lace situates the self, and the self brings meaning to the place. Place and self are indelible in the formation of their intertwined, reflexive identity.’8 The writers of texts are embodied and have their being in a particular place, a place that is interpreted through the metaphors and narratives attached to place.
The interconnectedness in the various uses of desolation in Jeremiah and Lamentations to describe the impact of destruction in both the physical and emotional realms speaks of the inseparability of being and place. The mirroring of language can be read as an implicit recognition of the permeable boundaries between people, place and land which, in the context of the present discussion, is able to point to the effectiveness and, I would suggest, the extent of, the physical destruction of the city and its environments as one of the tools of Babylonian warfare.
In this essay, I will examine the use of םמשׁ in selected texts from
the books of Jeremiah and Lamentations in order to explore something of the ecological impact of war. As well as drawing on historical and archaeological evidence concerning siege warfare and the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 , I will introduce the term solast- algia, a neologism coined by Australian environmental philosopher Glenn Albrecht, to describe place-based distress.9 I will argue that the community who survived the destruction of Jerusalem experienced solastalgia due to the decimation of both the city and its environs. As an effective tool in the geopolitical power dynamics of ancient war, the destruction of place, both urban and rural, was used as a means of gaining and maintaining submission of the conquered peoples.
7. F. Clingerman, ‘Memory, Imagination and the Hermeneutics of Place’, in
Interpreting Nature: The Emerging Field of Environmental Hermeneutics, ed. F. Clingerman, B. Treanor, M. Drenthem and D. Ustler (New York: Fordham University Press, 2014), 245–63 (249).
8. Ibid., 255.
9. G. Albrecht. ‘Solastalgia’, Alternatives Journal 32 (2006): 34–6; G. Albrecht et al., ‘Solastalgia: The Distress Caused by Environmental Change’, Australasian Psychiatry 15 (2007): S95–S98.
Solastalgia
Arising as they do from the context of war, both Jeremiah and Lamentations provide a window into the impact of war on the community and their environment.10 Both books originate during the period of the Babylonian Empire and in their different ways concern the consequences of Babylonian invasion and warfare, including the destruction of the capital city Jerusalem.11 Both collections address the needs of those who survived the catastrophe, and function as meaning-making texts in the face of the trauma of destruction and warfare.12
In both books there is a focus on suffering. A significant aspect of the suffering can be attributed to radical alteration of both the built and natural environments. That human health and well-being is intimately tied to place and the identity gained through an association with place/s is finding renewed emphasis across a range of disciplinary fields. Arising out of his work with a number of communities within Australia whose home environments had been radically altered through industrial ventures such as coal mining, Albrecht introduced the term solastalgia to describe what he calls earth-related mental illnesses. Albrecht defines solastalgia as ‘the emplaced and existential melancholia produced by the lived experience of negatively perceived transformation of a loved home environment’.13
Solastalgia refers to the place-based distress that people feel in the lived experience of profound environmental change. It reflects an experience of severe distress, both physical and psychological, due to the disruption of
10. In linking Jeremiah and Lamentations in this way I am not implying common authorship, only common rhetorical context.
11. With Kathleen O’Connor, I would argue that for the readers of the book of Jeremiah the disaster was in the past. Jeremiah and Lamentations can both be read as responses to the disaster of 587 . K. O’Connor, Jeremiah: Pain and Promise
(Minneapolis: Augsburg, 2011), 32.
12. For a discussion of Jeremiah as meaning-making literature see O’Connor,
Jeremiah; L. Stulman, ‘Reading the Prophets as Meaning-making Literature for Communities Under Siege’, HBT 29 (2007): 153–75. For discussion of Lamenta- tions, see E. Boase, ‘The Traumatized Body: Communal Trauma and Somatization in Lamentations’, in Trauma and Truamatization in Individual and Collective Dimen- sions: Insights from BiblicalStudies and Beyond, ed. E. Becker, J. Dochhorn and E. Holt (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), 193–209; T. Linafelt, Surviving Lamentations: Catastrophe, Lament and Protest in the Afterlife of a Biblical Book
(Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2000).
13. G. Albrecht, ‘Psychoterratic Conditions in a Scientific and Technological World’, in Ecopsychology: Science, Totems, and the Technological Species, ed. P. H. Kahn Jr and P. H. Hasbach (Cambridge: MIT, 2012), 241–64 (248).
a sense of place and identity. A sense of powerlessness and helplessness is often associated. It is a profound sense of ‘home-sickness’ while still at home.
Lying behind the term solastalgia are the words desolation and solace. Desolation can refer to ‘both a personal feeling of abandonment (isolation) and to a landscape that has been devastated’.14 Psychologically, solace refers to ‘the comfort one is given in difficult times (consolation)’, and is also associated with that which ‘gives comfort or strength’.15 This, argues Albrecht, might be a place, a landscape, a special environment. Drawing these threads together, solastalgia can be defined as ‘the pain or sickness caused by the loss of, or inability to derive solace from, the present state of one’s home environment’.16 When home – one’s physical environment – is desolate, solastalgia is a lived experience of dislocation when still at home.17
Desolate Land, Desolate People
Reading the books of Jeremiah and Lamentations through the lens of
solastalgia, it is significant that both the land and the people are described as being desolate. Like its English equivalent, the Hebrew root word םמשׁ
and its variants (המשׁ/הממשׁ), as has been noted, can be used to describe
both psychological states and geographical / physical destruction. In its primary usage םמשׁ is most commonly applied to places and things, and
usually refers to the desolation caused by a great disaster.18 A variety of ‘natural’ and built environments can be described as desolate: cities, arable land, the land in its fullness, mountains, the inheritance of Israel, roads. Verbal forms are rarely applied to people, occurring only in Lam. 3.11 and 1.13, along with limited references in Isaiah (54.1; 62.4). Two nominal forms occur: הממשׁ (devastation) and המשׁ (waste, horror,
appalment). The word המשׁ ‘in most passages stresses the horror caused
by the desolation of judgement. It is frequently used with words such as “curse,” “reproach,” “byword,” “object of hissing.”’19 With הממשׁ, ‘the stress is usually on the desolation itself’ – ‘an inner response to an outward scene’.20 14. Albrecht, ‘Solastalgia’, 35. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid. 17. Ibid. 18. TWOT 2:936–7. 19. Ibid., 2:937. 20. Ibid., 2:936–7.
In Jeremiah there is a particular concern with the decimated land / Earth, which is present as subject.21 Here we encounter a theology of land in which a symbiotic relationship exists between God, people and land such that human behaviour is understood as being consequential for the health of the land.22 The impact of war (and of sin) on the land is a recurring motif.
The land / Earth is not present as subject in Lamentations, whose central focus is on the pain and suffering experienced by the community in the aftermath of destruction.23 The descriptions reflect an ongoing state of suffering, with chs. 4 and 5 in particular emphasizing that a significant component of the present distress is grounded in the ongoing deprivation that was being experienced, a deprivation due in part, I will argue, to the desolation of both the city and its environs.
Rather than examining all the uses of םמשׁ, המשׁ/הממשׁ in Jeremiah and
Lamentations, I will focus on particular passages from both books. Desolation in Jeremiah
Jeremiah 4.5–31
Within the book of Jeremiah םמשׁ is used most commonly in reference to
the destruction of the land (e.g., 10.25; 12.11; 33.10), but is also applied to humans (e.g., 4.9; 18.16). 24 In Jer. 4.5–31 it is applied to both humans and land (priests v. 9; land vv. 7 and 27). This passage has been the focus of a number of ecological readings because of the clear attribution of
21. Earth is capitalized in the recognition of Earth as a character and in keeping with the Earth Bible project. See, for example, N. C. Habel, ed., Readings from the Perspective of Earth, Earth Bible 1 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 2000).
22. N. C. Habel, The Land Is Mine: Six Biblical Land Ideologies (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), 75–96.
23. Dating of Lamentations is notoriously difficult. Although there is an immediacy to the descriptions, particularly in Lam. 2, which is frequently identified as the earliest of the poems, it is likely that there is some distance between the actual events and composition. There is broad agreement that the poems emerge during the Babylonian period, prior to the rise of the Persian Empire and the return from exile. For a full discussion see F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, ‘Linguistic Evidence for the Date of Lamentations’, JANES 26 (1998): 1–36.
24. J. Muilenburg, ‘The Terminology of Adversity in Jeremiah’, in Translating and Understanding the Old Testament: Essays in Honor of Herbert Gordon May, ed. H. T. Frank and W. R. Reed (Nashville: Abingdon, 1970), 42–63 (51). While Muilen- burg discusses the language of panic and terror as a human response in Jeremiah, he does not note the parallel usage of םמשׁ to refer to land.
voice and agency to Earth.25 The passage announces the coming of an army from the north, marching at the behest of God, and includes the presence of various voices (God, the prophet, the community and the Earth).26 Concomitant descriptions of the destruction of the land are used, giving a vivid description of the extent of devastation at the hands of the Babylonian forces.27 There is also a range of descriptions of associated human responses.
The passage opens with a series of imperatives, announcing a coming army, and commanding the people to gather in the fortified cites, places of supposed safety (vv. 5–6). Verse 7 describes the enemy as a lion and a destroyer (תחשׁ) coming to ‘make your land a waste (המּשׁ)’. The cities
will be ruined (הצנ) and without inhabitants. The people are commanded
to put on sackcloth, lament and wail – that is, to go into mourning (v. 8).28 Verse 9 describes the response of the leadership ‘on that day’. The courage of king and officials will fail and the priests shall be appalled / desolate (םמשׁ), the prophets astounded. Reflected here is a lack of insight
in both civil and religious leadership and their failure to understand the coming consequences. The desolation of the priests echoes the desolation of the land (v. 7).
Verses 11–18 contain further descriptions of the coming judgement including descriptions of the army (besiegers, רצנ, v. 16), indictments of
the people (vv. 14, 18), and a report of the people’s response (‘woe to us, for we are ruined [דדשׁ]’, v. 13). Ruined (דדשׁ) is used twenty-six times
in Jeremiah (out of fifty occurrences in the HB), making this a significant motif in the book. Like םמשׁ it can be used of both people and the land.29 It recurs twice again in v. 20, where the consequence of war is described: ‘Disaster [רבשׁ] overtakes disaster [רבשׁ], the whole land is laid waste
25. See, for example, S. Wurst, ‘Retrieving Earth’s Voice in Jeremiah: An Annotated Voicing of Jeremiah 4’, in The Earth Story in the Psalms and the Prophets, ed. N. C. Habel and S. Wurst, Earth Bible 4 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 2001), 172–84; E. Boase, ‘Grounded in the Body: A Bakhtinian Reading of Lamentations 2 from Another Perspective’, BibInt 22 (2014): 292–306.
26. See Wurst, ‘Retrieving Earth’s Voice’.
27. The extent of this pericope is commonly debated, with several commentators arguing that this is a composite unit. For a rationale for treating these verses together, see K. M. Hayes, ‘The Earth Mourns’: Prophetic Metaphor and Oral Aesthetic
(Atlanta: SBL, 2002), 69–72.
28. Jack Lundbom notes that this command points towards mourning rather than an act of contrition. J. Lundbom, Jeremiah1–20: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 21A (New York: Doubleday, 1999), 337.
[דדשׁ]. Suddenly my tents are destroyed [דדשׁ], my curtains in a moment.’
Once more, there is a mirroring of descriptors of both the land and the people.
Verse 27 again describes the land / Earth (ץראה־לכ) as a desolation
(הממשׁ). Verses 23–26 contain a haunting description of creation being
undone. In language which echoes the creation account of Gen. 1, the earth is described as והבו והת (waste and void) and lacking light.
Mountains and hills quake and move, humans are absent and the birds have fled. The fruitful land is described as a desert (רבדמ) and the city in
ruins / pulled down (ץתנ). The description culminates with God declaring
that the whole land shall be made a desolation (v. 27), and that as a conse- quence the earth shall mourn / dry up (לבא) and the sky grow black.30 For the readers of the written text this description would well recall the ruin and decimation of war. The picture is one of a destroyed and shattered landscape, with familiar landmarks erased, agricultural lands decimated and wildlife (i.e. birds) having fled.
Throughout these verses there is a mirroring of both place and people through the use of common language for both. Land and people are described as desolate and ruined. The people are called to go into mourning, a mourning already in process in the land. A direct link is made between the state of the land and the state of the people, portraying both as victims of war. In this passage there is a greater emphasis on the destruction of place than there is of people, but the interconnectedness of both is clear.
Jeremiah 9.9–10 (9.10–11 ਓਖ)
A similar accumulation of references to human emotion and the destruction of land and city occurs in Jer. 9.9–10. In v. 10, it is announced that the towns of Judah will become a desolation (הממשׁ) without inhabitants.
Jerusalem itself is singled out to become a heap (לג), the lair of jackals.
Desolation here clearly speaks of the destruction of place.
The preceding verse introduces elements of weeping and lamentation, the destruction of the land and the loss of animal and birdlife. There is ambiguity as to the speaker in v. 9. The verbs are first person and announce the speaker’s weeping and wailing over the mountains and lament over the pastures of the wilderness. The Septuagint and several versions read the opening verb as an imperative, making this a command