327 POSTMODERNISM DEUS AND THE ABSCONDITUS I called on your name, O YHWH, from the lowest pit. My voice you heard. You did not cover your ear to my outcry, to my cry. You approached on a day when I called you. You said, “Do not fear ”. The reference is to a past episode, now recalled for support of a faltering faith 28. If the controlling verbs are taken as perfects of certitude, the so-called prophetic perfect 29, the aspect is consistent with 3,19-30, which looks for an imminent (?) divine deliverance. In this case, the poet asserts his intention in the face of despair. The aspect now is future, albeit a future regarded as virtually certain 30. I will call on your name, O YHWH, from the lowest pit. My voice you will hear. You will not cover your ear to my outcry, to my cry. You will approach on a day when I call you. You will say, “Do not fear”. Still another way these difficult cola might be understood, with Hillers and Lemke 31, is to take the entire sequence of action as imperative or precative in mood: I call your name, O YHWH, out of the lowest pit. Hear my voice! Do not cover your ear to my outcry, to my cry. Approach on a day when I call you. Say, “Do not fear”. So I. PROVAN, Lamentations (New Century Bible; Grand Rapids, MI 28 1991) 81-82. Most modern commentators accept that a past event is in view here. See: N. GOTTWALD, Studies in the Book of Lamentations (SBT 14; London, 1954) 14; T. MEEK, “The Book of Lamentations,” The Interpreter’s Bible (Nashville 1956) VI, 28; H. WIESMANN, Die Klagelieder. Übersetzt und erklärt (Frankfurt 1954) 194, 196. R. WILLIAMS, Williams’ Hebrew Syntax, § 165. GKC identifies these as 29 the perfectum propheticum, describing an “imminent” event as “already accomplished ” (§ 106.1n) ; since the speaker resolves to do something in the future, B. WALTKE – M. O’CONNOR (Hebrew Syntax, § 30.4b) identify this as a perfective of resolve. This line uses a prolepsis in which the poet “anticipates coming events 30 as if they have already occurred” — H. HARVEY JR., “ Lamentations ”, The Interpreter’s One-Volume Commentary on the Bible (ed. C.M. LAYMON) (Nashville, TN 1971) 408. D. HILLERS, Lamentations [1972], 52; W. LEMKE, “Lamentations”, The 31 HarperCollins Study Bible: New Revised Standard Version (ed. W. MEEKS ; New York, NY 1993) 1217. Cf. also I. PROVAN, Lamentations, 83; F. DOBBS- ALLSOP, Lamentations, 126.