John Calvin Commentary Lamentations 3:33

"For he doth not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men." — Lamentations 3:33 (ASV)

This is another confirmation of the same truth: that God takes no delight in the evils or miseries of men. It is indeed a strong, yet very suitable, way of speaking that the Prophet adopts. We know that God, as it were, takes on our form or manner, because He cannot be comprehended in His inconceivable glory by human minds. This is why He transfers to Himself what properly can only apply to men.

God surely never acts unwillingly or insincerely. How then can Jeremiah’s declaration be suitable—that God does not afflict from His heart? But God, as has already been said, here assumes the character of a man. For though He afflicts us with sorrow as He pleases, it is nevertheless true that He does not delight in the miseries of men. If a father desires to benefit his own children and deals kindly with them, what ought we to think of our heavenly Father?

You, says Christ, who are evil,
know how to do good to your children, (Matthew 7:11).

What, then, are we to expect from the very fountain of goodness? Just as parents, then, are not willingly angry with their children, nor handle them roughly, there is no doubt that God never punishes men except when He is compelled.

There is, as I have said, an impropriety in the expression, but it is enough to know that God derives no pleasure from the miseries of men. This is unlike what profane men say, who utter such blasphemies as these: that we are like balls with which God plays, and that we are exposed to many evils because God wishes to have, as it were, a pleasant and delightful spectacle in looking on the innumerable afflictions, and at length on the death of men.

So that such thoughts, then, might not tempt us to unbelief, the Prophet here restrains us and declares that God does not afflict from His heart—that is, willingly, as if He delighted in the evils of men. Consider a judge who, when he ascends his throne and condemns the guilty to death, does not do this from his heart, because he wishes all to be innocent and thus to have a reason for acquitting them. But yet he willingly condemns the guilty, because this is his duty.

So also God, when He adopts severity towards men, indeed does so willingly, because He is the Judge of the world. But He does not do so from the heart, because He wishes all to be innocent—for all fierceness and cruelty are far from Him. And as He regards men with paternal love, He would also have them to be saved, if they did not, as it were, by force drive Him to rigor. He also expresses this feeling in Isaiah,

Ah! I will take consolation from My adversaries.
(Isaiah 1:24).

He calls them adversaries who so often provoked Him by their obstinacy. Yet He was led unwillingly to punish their sins, and therefore He used a particle expressive of grief and exclaimed Ah! just as a father who wishes his son to be innocent and yet is compelled to be severe with him.

However true this doctrine may be in general, there is still no doubt that the Prophet here addresses only the faithful. And doubtless this privilege especially belongs to God’s children, as has been shown before.