Lamentations 3 Footnotes

3:37-38 The point of this passage is that there is no other god who can decree anything and make it come to pass. If anything at all happens, it is because the Lord has commanded and orchestrated it (Is 45:7; Jr 32:42; Am 3:6). But even if biblical figures implied that God brought adversity (Jb 2:10), to say that God is helpless to stop adversity would be to misread the Bible and destroy hope. God is all-powerful; if he can control adversity, it follows that any adversity that comes occurs only at his decree (Jb 2:10; Lm 1:5,12,21; 3:1-16) for the purpose of judgment or discipline.

But God is not the Author of evil that comes as the result of poor choices people make. This passage was written against the background of the demise of Judah and Jerusalem, which Jeremiah saw as the consequence of the breaking of the Lord’s covenant with his people. In giving the covenant, the Lord pronounced both blessings and curses (Lv 26; Dt 28), so that “both adversity and good come” from his mouth. God had not caused the enemies of his people to be evil; it was their own choice to refuse the Lord and his ways that made them so; God then channeled their evil (Ps 76:10) to accomplish his purposes of judgment against those who were unfaithful to his covenant. But his aim, all along, had been to move them to repentance (Jr 36:3; Lm 3:31-33; Am 4:10-11; see Heb 12:9-11). Jeremiah was dealing with a specific historical situation in which the covenant sanctions had been applied, not with the general question of where evil comes from. As to the Bible’s answer to that question, it is clear that evil comes from Satan, “the evil one,” and that people—made in God’s image—have the ability to resist that evil if they are willing to do so (Eph 6:16; Jms 4:7; 1Pt 5:8).

3:44 This outburst was not a denial of God’s willingness to hear prayer; it was an emotional appeal from one to whom it seemed that God had turned a deaf ear (3:8; Ps 13:1). In the end, the Lord did hear him (Lm 3:55-58). However, it is the case that the Lord may refuse to acknowledge the prayers of the unrepentant (v. 42; Pr 1:24-28; Is 1:15; Jr 11:11; Zch 7:13; see 1Pt 3:7).