333 POSTMODERNISM DEUS AND THE ABSCONDITUS involves certain phenomena that carry us to the thought of the tran- scendent 50. We are “thrown” beyond ourselves (Heidegger), beyond hyperbole to the transcendent. Something in our experience (im- manence) suggests something beyond our experience (transcend- ence), something “asymmetrical” to finitude in the middle of finitude. These excessive happenings become signs that point be- yond us to ultimacy. While Lamentations is certainly not postmodern in the broadest sense, something like Desmond’s ideation is going on when the poet of the third poem dares break the silence of God in the book. Why the book seems so reticent to “voice” the divine is a mystery. Perhaps this reticence is rooted in the poet’s fear of the divine, particularly since the distress of Jerusalem is attributed to YHWH’s excessive anger (2,20-22). Perhaps this same Kierkegaardian “fear and trembling” of the Numinous furthermore inclined the poet to avoid too familiar mention of the divine, in keeping with other post- exilic Jewish literature. Nevertheless, the poet in 3,57 interrupts the interplay of silence / presence by offering a divine word in direct speech, however elusive or metaphorical this speech may be. In sum, Lamentations is often thought to reflect the silence of God. Although the five poems making up the book mention YHWH numerous times, God seemingly does not act or speak within the poetry. Contextual, literary, grammatical, and form critical analysis of Lam 3,55-57, the crux interpretum for the silence of God in the book, compel consideration that the q strophe from the long, triple acrostic third poem may intend to break this oppressive silence, representing the divine Voice as saying, “Do not fear”. The strophe may reflect, in other words, the poet’s past or present experience after the fall of the city, an awareness of the Divine Presence who in absence speaks a word of assurance. For these poets in Lamentations, God still stands in the background of the whole of life, emerging only fleetingly and even then in ways oblique. To the skeptical, this detachment may be interpreted as the absence, or even non-existence of God; to the person of faith, as the The term “transcendent” is ambiguous. Does it mean spatial, temporal, 50 axiological, or ontological transcendence? In Desmond’s thought, it seems to denote an axiological or ontological transcendence. Cf. W. POWER, “ Notion of Transcendence and the Problem of Discourse about God”, JAAR 43 (1975) 535-538).