John Calvin Commentary Lamentations 3:43

"Thou hast covered with anger and pursued us; thou hast slain, thou hast not pitied." — Lamentations 3:43 (ASV)

At first glance, this complaint may seem to proceed from a bitter heart, for here the faithful complain that they had been killed, and then that God had executed His judgment as if in darkness, without any leniency; and the next verse confirms the same thing. But it is a simple acknowledgment of God’s righteous vengeance, for in their extreme calamities the faithful could not declare that God had dealt mercifully with them, as they had been subjected to extreme rigor, as we have previously seen.

If they had said that they had been leniently chastised, it would have been very strange. The temple had been burned, the city demolished, the kingdom overthrown; most of the people had been driven into exile, the remainder scattered, and God’s covenant had been, in a way, abolished. For it could not have been thought otherwise according to the judgment of the flesh.

If, then, the exiles in Chaldea had said that God had struck them leniently, would not such an understatement have appeared very strange? And what if the Prophet had also spoken in the same way? The causes of sorrow were almost innumerable: everyone had been robbed of their possessions, and there were many widows and many orphans. But the chief causes of sorrow were the burning of the temple and the ruin of the kingdom. No wonder, then, that the faithful describe here their severe afflictions; yet they seek no other cause than their own sins.

Therefore, they now say that God had covered them over in wrath. This is a most suitable metaphor, as if he had said that God had executed His vengeance in thick darkness. For an object presented to the eye produces sympathy, and we are easily inclined to mercy when a sad spectacle is presented to us.

Therefore, even the most savage enemies are sometimes softened, for they are led by their eyes to acts of humanity. The Prophet, then, in order to describe the horrible vengeance of God, says that a covering had been introduced, so that God had punished the wicked people in an implacable manner. But as I have said, he does not charge God with cruelty, though he says that God had covered them over in wrath.

He then says, You have pursued us and killed us, and have not spared. They indicate, in short, that God had been a severe judge.

But at the same time, they turned to themselves and sought the cause there, so that they might not, by their own hardness, provoke God against themselves, as hypocrites are accustomed to do.

And the consciousness of evil also leads us to repentance. For why is it that people grow numb in their sins, except that they flatter themselves? When, therefore, God suspends His judgments, or when He moderates them and does not punish people as they deserve, then, if there is any repentance, it is still cold and soon vanishes.

This, then, is the reason why God inflicts deadly blows: because we do not feel His hand unless the blow is, as it were, deadly. Since, then, simple chastisement is not sufficient to lead us to repentance, the Prophet introduces the faithful as speaking in this way: “Behold, You have in wrath covered us over, so as not to look on us,” so that there might be no opportunity for mercy—that is, so that they might be the judges of themselves and conclude from the atrocity of their punishment how grievously they must have provoked the wrath of God. It follows in the same sense—