King James Bible Dictionary

LAME, adjective

1. Crippled or disabled in a limb, or otherwise injured so as to be unsound and impaired in strength; as a lame arm or leg, or a person lame in one leg.

2. Imperfect; not satisfactory; as a lame excuse.

3. Hobbling; not smooth; as numbers in verse.

LAME, verb transitive To make lame; to cripple or disable; to render imperfect and unsound; as, to lame an arm or a leg.

The strikerdown; the wild man.

1. The fifth in descent from Cain. He was the first to violate the primeval ordinance of marriage (Genesis 4:18-24). His address to his two wives, Adah and Zillah (4:23, 24), is the only extant example of antediluvian poetry. It has been called "Lamech's sword-song." He was "rude and ruffianly," fearing neither God nor man. With him the curtain falls on the race of Cain. We know nothing of his descendants.

2. The seventh in descent from Seth, being the only son of Methuselah. Noah was the oldest of his several sons (Genesis 5:25-31; Luke 3:36).

poor; made low

1. Father of Jabal, Jubal, and Tubal-Cain
Genesis 4:18-24

2. Son of Methuselah, and father of Noah, lived 777 years:

General references
Genesis 5:25-31; 1 Chronicles 1:3

Ancestor of Jesus
Luke 3:36

(powerful), properly Lemech.

1. The fifth lineal descendant from Cain. (Genesis 4:18-24) He is the only one except Enoch, of the posterity of Cain, whose history is related with some detail. His two wives, Adah and Zillah, and his daughter Naamah, are, with Eve, the only antediluvian women whose names are mentioned by Moses. His three sons, Jabal, Jubal and Tubal-cain, are celebrated in Scripture as authors of useful inventions. The remarkable poem which Lamech uttered may perhaps be regarded as Lamech's son of exultation on the invention of the sword by his son Tubal-cain, in the possession of which he foresaw a great advantage to himself and his family over any enemies.
2. The father of Noah. (Genesis 5:29)

LAM'EL, noun [Latin lamella. See Lamin.] A thin plate or scale of any thing.

LAM'ELLAR, adjective [from lamel.] Disposed in thin plates or scales.

LAM'ELLARLY, adverb In thin plates or scales.

LAM'ELLATE,

LAM'ELLATED, adjective Formed in thin plates or scales, or covered with them.

LAMELLIF'EROUS, adjective [Latin lamella and fero, to produce.

Producing plates; an epithet of polypiers presenting lamellar stars, or waved furrows a garnished with plates.

LAM'ELLIFORM, adjective [Latin lamella, a plate, and form.] Having the form of a plate.

LA'MELY, adverb [See Lame.]

1. Like a cripple; with impaired strength; in a halting manner; as, to walk lamely

2. Imperfectly; without a complete exhibition of parts; as a figure lamely drawn; a scene lamely described.

3. Weakly; poorly; unsteadily; feebly.

Disqualified priests from exercising the priestly office
Leviticus 21:18

Disqualified animals for sacrificial uses
Deuteronomy 15:21

Hated by David
2 Samuel 5:8

Healed by Jesus
Matthew 11:5; Matthew 15:31; Matthew 21:14; Luke 7:22

Healed by Peter
Acts 3:2-11

Figurative
Hebrews 12:13

LA'MENESS, noun

1. An impaired state of the body or limbs; loss of natural soundness and strength by a wound or by disease; particularly applied to the limbs, and implying a total or partial inability; as the lameness of the leg or arm.

2. Imperfection; weakness; as the lameness of an argument or of a description.

LAMENT', verb intransitive [Latin lamentor.]

1. To mourn; to grieve; to weep or wail; to express sorrow.

Jeremiah lamented for Josiah. 2 Chronicles 35:25.

2. To regret deeply; to feel sorrow.

LAMENT', verb transitive To bewail; to mourn for; to bemoan; to deplore.

One laughed at follies, one lamented crimes.

LAMENT', noun [Latin lamentum.] Grief or sorrow expressed in complaints or cries; lamentation; a weeping.

Torment, and loud lament and furious rage.

[This noun is used chiefly or solely in poetry.]

LAM'ENTABLE, adjective [Latin lamentabilis.]

1. To be lamented; deserving sorrow; as a lamentable declension of morals.

2. Mournful; adapted to awaken grief; as a lamentable tune.

3. Expressing sorrow; as lamentable cries.

4. Miserable; pitiful; low; poor; in a sense rather ludicrous. [Little used.]

LAM'ENTABLY, adverb

1. Mournfully; with expressions or tokens of sorrow.

2. So as to cause sorrow.

3. Pitifully; despicably.

(Heb. qinah), an elegy or dirge. The first example of this form of poetry is the lament of David over Saul and Jonathan (2 Samuel 1:17-27). It was a frequent accompaniment of mourning (Amos 8:10). In 2 Samuel 3:33, 34 is recorded David's lament over Abner. Prophecy sometimes took the form of a lament when it predicted calamity (Ezekiel 27:2, 32; 28:12; 32:2, 16).

LAMENTA'TION, noun [Latin lamentatio.]

1. Expression of sorrow; cries of grief; the act of bewailing.

In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation and weeping. Matthew 2:18.

2. In the plural, a book of Scripture, containing the lamentations of Jeremiah.

Of David
Psalms 60:1-3

Of Jeremiah
Psalms 25:1

Of Ezekiel
Ezekiel 19:1-14; Ezekiel 28:12-19
Elegy

Title.

The Hebrew title of this book, Ecah , is taken, like the titles of the five books of Moses, from the Hebrew word with which it opens. Author.

The poems included in this collection appear in the Hebrew canon with no name attached to them, but Jeremiah has been almost universally regarded as their author. Date.

The poems belong unmistakably to the last days of the kingdom, or the commencement of the exile, B.C. 629-586. They are written by one who speaks, with the vividness and intensity of an eye-witness, of the misery which he bewails. Contents.

The book consists of five chapter, each of which, however, is a separate poem, complete in itself, and having a distinct subject, but brought at the same time under a plan which includes them all. A complicated alphabetic structure pervades nearly the whole book. (1) Chs. 1,2 and 4 contain twenty-two verses each, arranged in alphabetic order, each verse falling into three nearly balanced clauses; ch. (Lamentations 2:19) forms an exception, as having a fourth clause. (2) Ch. 3 contains three short verses under each letter of the alphabet, the initial letter being three times repeated. (3) Ch. 5 contains the same number of verses as chs. 1,2,4, but without the alphabetic order. Jeremiah was not merely a patriot-poet, weeping over the ruin of his country; he was a prophet who had seen all this coming, and had foretold it as inevitable. There are perhaps few portions of the Old Testament which appear to have done the work they were meant to do more effectually than this. The book has supplied thousands with the fullest utterance for their sorrows in the critical periods of national or individual suffering. We may well believe that it soothed the weary years of the Babylonian exile. It enters largely into the order of the Latin Church for the services of passion-week. On the ninth day of the month of Ab (July-August), the Lamentations of Jeremiah were read, year by year, with fasting and weeping, to commemorate the misery out of which the people had been delivered.

Called in the Hebrew canon 'Ekhah, meaning "How," being the formula for the commencement of a song of wailing. It is the first word of the book (see 2 Samuel 1:19-27). The LXX. adopted the name rendered "Lamentations" (Gr. threnoi = Heb. qinoth) now in common use, to denote the character of the book, in which the prophet mourns over the desolations brought on the city and the holy land by Chaldeans. In the Hebrew Bible it is placed among the Khethubim. (See BIBLE.)

As to its authorship, there is no room for hesitancy in following the LXX. and the Targum in ascribing it to Jeremiah. The spirit, tone, language, and subject-matter are in accord with the testimony of tradition in assigning it to him. According to tradition, he retired after the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar to a cavern outside the Damascus gate, where he wrote this book. That cavern is still pointed out. "In the face of a rocky hill, on the western side of the city, the local belief has placed the grotto of Jeremiah.' There, in that fixed attitude of grief which Michael Angelo has immortalized, the prophet may well be supposed to have mourned the fall of his country" (Stanley, Jewish Church).

The book consists of five separate poems. In chapter 1 the prophet dwells on the manifold miseries oppressed by which the city sits as a solitary widow weeping sorely. In chapter 2 these miseries are described in connection with the national sins that had caused them. Chapter 3 speaks of hope for the people of God. The chastisement would only be for their good; a better day would dawn for them. Chapter 4 laments the ruin and desolation that had come upon the city and temple, but traces it only to the people's sins. Chapter 5 is a prayer that Zion's reproach may be taken away in the repentance and recovery of the people.

The first four poems (chapters) are acrostics, like some of the Psalms (25, 34, 37, 119), i.e., each verse begins with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet taken in order. The first, second, and fourth have each twenty-two verses, the number of the letters in the Hebrew alphabet. The third has sixty-six verses, in which each three successive verses begin with the same letter. The fifth is not acrostic.

Speaking of the "Wailing-place (q.v.) of the Jews" at Jerusalem, a portion of the old wall of the temple of Solomon, Schaff says: "There the Jews assemble every Friday afternoon to bewail the downfall of the holy city, kissing the stone wall and watering it with their tears. They repeat from their well-worn Hebrew Bibles and prayer-books the Lamentations of Jeremiah and suitable Psalms."

LAMENT'ED, participle passive Bewailed; mourned for.

LAMENT'ER, noun One who mourns, or cries out with sorrow.

LAMENTIN. [See Lamantin.]

LAM'ENTIN, noun A species of the walrus or sea-cow, the Trichechus manatus.

LAMENT'ING, participle present tense Bewailing; mourning; weeping.

LAMENT'ING, noun A mourning; lamentation.