Ad Memoriam - A Lament for Gaza and Jerusalem • California Recorder

Dr. Jonathan Kenigson, FRSA*

Praise to the Lord, who hath instructed me in my youth;

And hitherto declared his wondrous works;

To all of Sion; and in Midian which quaked;

Beneath the thunderous groans of flame-bedecked Horeb;

That when my eyes shall close in death;

And firmament is my perpetual couch;

With the youth slain in war, and David;

With gray locks my adornment, I retire;

To mortal soil which sewed my form;

That Thou shalt forsake me not in Memory of Israel.

Praise to the Lord, who hath distinguished me by name;

That shall be written in the flickering lamp;

In the clamour of cities and the still depths of the soil;

I desert places of Sinai and of Judah and Midian;

My corporeal form I had assumed without volition;

And, unconsenting, I surrender thus.

For I have trod the bitter plain;

Praise to Thee, oh Lord, for remitting me;

Not into estrangement from my Brethren;

To be a foreigner among my mother’s Seed;

Let me persist with Sion and the Judean pale;

That my Memory alone might dwell there.

Thou hast delivered men in life and others slain;

And it was condign that all the men of Pharoh should lament;

And Sihon of Amorah, and the men of Bashan, and of all Caanan

Should be delivered to the sword of Israel.

Praise to the Lord, who distinguished me from the Nations;

That my shade shall know not exile nor shall trace about;

The course of the Euphrates through the fertile plain;

So far from Sion; yet so abounding in the fruits;

Of Earth and Empire, that the conqueror’s hearth;

Should be full, and the hearths of thy children barren;

And Jerusalem shouldst lay in ruin.

For thy Sons incur tenfold measure of thy wrath;

Who felt thy presence as Shaddai, and yet renounced

Thy ordinances.

His own Sons knew the sword of sovereign punishments;

That kings bear to their conquered treasoners;

In His scorn, He refused the shrine of Joseph and of Ephraim;

And adored the Judeans whose hearts did not make war;

Against the sovereign monarchy of Heaven;

For monarchies of men he favored humble David.

But when betrayed by his own Sons:

Favoured Nebuchadnezzar who beheld Him not.