Valley of tears
Vale of Jamming is a biblical description of the existence of the wandering people of God on their way through the desert as the valley of tears . The term reproduced in the Greek Septuagint "κοιλάδι τοῦ κλαυθμῶνο" (valley of lamentation) and in the Vulgate as vallis lacrimarum (valley of tears) goes back to the term from the psalm tradition , which is now translated as "arid, arid area":
- When they pass through the arid valley, / it becomes a source of spring for them, and early rain covers it in blessings. ( Ps 84,7 Lut )
The phrase is based on the Hebrew formulation עמק הבכא emek habaka (the Baka valley) as a waterless area that had to be traversed as a pilgrimage route before the longed-for sources of blessings in Zion opened up .
The turn found a classic recording in the medieval Salve Regina ( Greetings to Maria ), where the callers present themselves as weeping in this valley of tears ( flentes in hac lacrimarum valle ).
The motif of the valley of tears is handed down in various forms up to the present day in Christian-edifying text creation.
In the 19th century the image of the valley of tears became the target of atheist criticism, for example by Karl Marx and Heinrich Heine , whose singing harp girl became famous through the following verses:
- She sang of the earthly valley of
tears , Of joys that will soon melt away,
Of the hereafter, where the soul indulges in
transfigured delights.
