When they came to the threshing floor of Atad, which is beyond the Jordan, they held there a very great and sorrowful lamentation, and he observed a time of mourning for his father seven days.

for four days every year the daughters of Israel would go out to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite.

From the day that the ark was lodged at Kiriath-jearim, a long time passed, some twenty years, and all the house of Israel lamented after the Lord.

David intoned this lamentation over Saul and his son Jonathan.

The king lamented for Abner, saying, “Should Abner die as a fool dies?

When the wife of Uriah heard that her husband was dead, she made lamentation for him.

Jeremiah also uttered a lament for Josiah, and all the singing men and singing women have spoken of Josiah in their laments to this day. They made these a custom in Israel; they are recorded in the Laments.

In every province, wherever the king’s command and his decree came, there was great mourning among the Jews, with fasting and weeping and lamenting, and most of them lay in sackcloth and ashes.

and giving orders that these days of Purim should be observed at their appointed seasons, as Mordecai the Jew and Queen Esther enjoined on the Jews, just as they had laid down for themselves and for their descendants regulations concerning their fasts and their lamentations.

Those who survive them the pestilence buries, and their widows make no lamentation.

as though I grieved for a friend or a brother; I went about as one who laments for a mother, bowed down and in mourning.

Psalm 44

National Lament and Prayer for Help

To the leader. Of the Korahites. A Maskil.

We have heard with our ears, O God; our ancestors have told us what deeds you performed in their days, in the days of old:

Their priests fell by the sword, and their widows made no lamentation.

Psalm 137

Lament over the Destruction of Jerusalem

By the rivers of Babylon— there we sat down, and there we wept when we remembered Zion.

And her gates shall lament and mourn; desolate, she shall sit upon the ground.

Those who fish will mourn; all who cast hooks in the Nile will lament, and those who spread nets on the water will languish.

Yet I will oppress Ariel, and there shall be moaning and lamentation, and you shall be to me like an Ariel.

Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: For your sake I will send to Babylon and break down all the bars, and the shouting of the Chaldeans will be turned to lamentation.

Because of this put on sackcloth, lament and wail: “The fierce anger of the Lord has not turned away from us.”

O daughter of my people, put on sackcloth and roll in ashes; make mourning as for an only child, most bitter lamentation, for suddenly the destroyer will come upon us.

Cut off your hair and throw it away; raise a lamentation on the bare heights, for the Lord has rejected and forsaken the generation that provoked his wrath.

Take up weeping and wailing for the mountains and a lamentation for the pastures of the wilderness, because they are laid waste so that no one passes through, and the lowing of cattle is not heard; both the birds of the air and the animals have fled and are gone.

Hear, O women, the word of the Lord, and let your ears receive the word of his mouth; teach to your daughters a dirge and each to her neighbor a lament.

They shall die of deadly diseases. They shall not be lamented, nor shall they be buried; they shall become like dung on the surface of the ground. They shall perish by the sword and by famine, and their dead bodies shall become food for the birds of the air and for the wild animals of the earth.

For thus says the Lord: Do not enter the house of mourning or go to lament or bemoan them, for I have taken away my peace from this people, says the Lord, my steadfast love and mercy.