Lamentations 3:38
Lamentations 3:37-41 (see also Amos 3:6)
Who is there who speaks and it comes to pass, unless the Lord has commanded it? Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both good and ill go forth? Why should any living mortal, or any man, offer complaint in view of his sins? Let us examine and probe our ways, and let us return to the LORD. We lift up our heart and hands toward God in heaven.
Deterministic Calvinists infer from this that whatever a man says and does, comes about because God has sovereignly commanded it, whether good or bad, because God has ordained everything that comes to pass, and that all arguments to the contrary are merely an appeal to humanistic emotionalism:
One Calvinist explains: “Name an event, any event. Does it fit in one of the two above categories? All events are either good or bad. And what does the Bible say about these events?”
Question: Is this passage about just “any event”?
Answer: The “event” in focus is God’s judgment, rather than all acts of moral good and evil. This is about God judging sin, rather than ordaining sin.
Question: “Who is there who speaks and it comes to pass”?
Answer: The “mouth of the Most High,” meaning God. Prophecy is from the Lord, and what He says will surely comes to pass, and what He says can either be blessings or curses, so be careful how you live, in relation to the Lord.
Pointing to divine judgment, this was a call to introspection: “Why should any living mortal, or any man, offer complaint in view of his sins? Let us examine and probe our ways, and let us return to the LORD. We lift up our heart and hands toward God in heaven; we have transgressed and rebelled, You have not pardoned.” (Lamentations 3:39-42)
In context, “For He does not afflict willingly or grieve the sons of men. To crush under His feet all the prisoners of the land, to deprive a man of justice in the presence of the Most High, to defraud a man in his lawsuit--of these things the Lord does not approve.” (Lamentations 3:33-36)
So the passage speaks of moral events, which God does not approve (v.36), and the ensuing judgment events, which God is not anxious to carry out. (v.33) This passage is not teaching that God causes, decrees, scripts and ordains any and all events in human history. It speaks of the consequences of man’s disobedience and God’s power, and yet reluctance, to pull the plug.
One member of The Society of Evangelical Arminians: “When we hit 3:38, what is ‘from the mouth of Most High’ are the prophecies that Jeremiah (and others) have uttered about the desolation that Israel’s sins have garnered from the Lord. Those prophecies contained both ‘good’ and ‘ill’, with Israel being at the beginning of the ‘ill’ at the time of Jeremiah’s prophecy (with a lot more to come) and with Israel to eventually experience the ‘good’ once the exile is over. This is not about God having ordained and predestined everything for all time! Instead, this is about God’s reliability in bringing about what He said that He will accomplish. And what is that? The ‘ill’ of exile, because of Israel’s sins, and the eventual ‘good’ of bringing them back from exile.”
