Lamentations 3:33, “He does not afflict from His heart or grieve the children of man.”
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Lamentations is not only one of the most concentrated expressions of agony in the entire Bible, it is also a intricately and densely woven piece of poetry. Jeremiah pours his grief over the destruction of Jerusalem into a strict poetic form, and at the center of that form is the text cited above, Lamentations 3:33.
In the very eye of this maelstrom of sorrows stands—in immovable tranquility—the purposes of YHWH’s heart. Despite the inferno of horrors burning in the surrounding verses of this book, its central word is hope: YHWH’s design, YHWH’s intent, YHWH’s ultimate—and so defining—purpose is NOT pain, sorrow, horror, or affliction in and of themselves. Rather, His HEART intends to draw His people into the dawn of His new mercies and the eternal day of His steadfast love and faithfulness—which is to say, into Himself (3:22-23).
But we can press even further. In Hebrew, this central verse of the book of Lamentations has has seven words, and the fourth of those words—the absolute, bleeding center of this entire book, the single bright point ablaze at the core of all these sorrows—is “His heart” (which is a single word in Hebrew).
His heart. His heart. How staggeringly beautiful to consider. Press into the absolute center of this most grief-soaked book of Scripture, enter into the very holy of Holies of the gathered mortal agonies of God’s people, and there at the epicenter of human woe, we find the heart of YHWH God Himself, beating in mercy, pouring steadfast love and faithfulness down into the wilderness of suffering, watering the whole and turning the barren waste of the curse bitten world into the fruitful garden of His own beauty.
“His heart.” At the center of all our woes, of all our griefs, of all our most bitter and shattering agonies is the beating heart of God…And the purpose of that heart, the will, the design, the song of that heart, is revealed supremely at the resurrection of the crucified Jesus.
The heart of 3:33 is the heart revealed on Calvary as Calvary is itself revealed by the Resurrection. Crucifixion qua crucifixion is not “from His heart.” Naked, undefined crucifixion is only lamentation, it is the wormwood and the gall, the piercing arrows and the shattering billows, the rod of wrath and the tearing assaults of the enemy — this itself is not the Heart of God.
What that crucifixion is declared to be—and what the Crucified One is declared to be—through the resurrection, THAT is the Heart of God. And THAT is the Heart glimpsed here in Lam. 3:33 when, at the literary heart of this book of weeping, a window is opened upon the merciful heart of YHWH Himself—which is the Pierced Heart of the Risen Jesus, the heart from whose mortal wound (in which all griefs are gathered and which alone of all the griefs under the sun has been illumined in the light of the eschaton, interpreted by the radiance of consummate truth, conformed to the purposes of the divine will) from whose mortal wound the life blood of God pours down as streams nuptial wine and rivers of healing waters.
Our lamentations are real. There is a reason the majority of this book is breathed agony. But let us not forget, Christian, there is a heart beating beneath—and, indeed, pierced by—our every sorrow, and the song of that heart is not a funeral dirge! It is, rather, the sovereign gravity of dying and rising Love that will invincibly gather all our tears into orbiting rings of worship, glittering in the light of resurrection dawn.
