Biblical laments and the Blues

Abandonment

This link is to a typical Blues song (see https://map.bloomfire.com/posts/828611-biblical-poetry-and-the-blues). The common Blues theme in this song is that the singer wakes up and finds his love is gone.

http://www.songlyrics.com/freddie-king/woke-up-this-morning-lyrics/

The biblical analog can be found at the beginning of Lamentations (vv. 1, 14):

How lonely lies Jerusalem, once so full of people! ...The Lord abandoned me to my sins (GNT)

Of course the biblical lament usually goes on to say it is God himself that has not only abandoned his people, but is actually punishing them himself. Still the feelings of loneliness and anguish unite these ancient and modern expressions of abandonment across the centuries.

How long?

The following biblical citation and the youtube video ask the same question ("How long?") in very different contexts. Although they speak to very different situations, the longing and pain expressed in the biblical lament and the Blues song are part of the universal human condition.

Psa 94.3:

Lord, how long will the wicked,
how long will the wicked exult? 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lb2REjtpMI&feature=kp