Children, who are about to be disciplined, might have heard their mom or dad say, “This is going to hurt me more than it will hurt you.” They probably didn’t believe it at the time. So, it’s not surprising that we might be skeptical when we read Lamentations 3:33. Jeremiah writes that the Lord “does not willingly bring affliction or grief to anyone.” If this is true, why do affliction and grief happen at all?

What the Hebrew literally says is that the Lord does not do these things “from his heart.” Jeremiah does not deny God’s sovereign control. “Who can speak and have it happen if the Lord has not decreed it?” he declares in verse 37. In the next verse, he doubles down: “Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both calamities and good things come?” (v. 38). Jeremiah does not merely say that God foresees such things. He asserts that God commands them. That is a hard pill to swallow, not just for us but even for some of God’s prophets (see also Hab. 1:3, 5, 13).

Yet Jeremiah distinguishes God’s own disposition and moral nature from that of the human instruments He sometimes uses to discipline His people. The Lord takes no pleasure in the suffering He allows. Nor does He condone the actions of those who “crush underfoot all prisoners in the land” and who “deny people their rights before the Most High, to deprive them of justice” (vv. 34–36). While He uses such people to accomplish His purposes, they, in turn, are accountable for their actions. In other words, the prophet distinguishes the rod from the hand that wields it. The nature of God’s heart is revealed in the fact that He has chosen to act within the broken world through fallen people. His aim is not to afflict or to grieve but to redeem.

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