NOTES for Lam 3:34-66
Repentance begins with acknowledging God's complete and absolute sovereignty over His creation. That is why the author of the book says that not only good but also evil comes from God. The point is not that God is the source of evil: if that were so, the God of the Bible would be no different from certain double-faced deities of the pagan world, from whom both good and bad could also be expected. The point is that God is the source of all existence whatsoever.
This is not a matter of emanation, not a claim that the world somehow mysteriously “flows out” of God's depths, but a matter of God's will, without which no existence is possible: neither that of God Himself nor that of any of His creatures. The fact that in certain cases the existence of some of His creatures becomes distorted and perverted does not alter the fact that they all remain His creatures. If that is so, then God naturally knows how not only He Himself but also each of His creatures exists. What God does not know about does not exist at all. Yet when it comes to spiritual beings, even created ones, beings endowed by the Creator with free will, it turns out that the quality of their existence is not always determined by God's will.
These created beings are given a will of their own, though not an absolute one like their Creator's, precisely so that they can determine for themselves what their existence will be like. Having determined this, they can become aware of their own existence and take responsibility for it. There is, of course, another side to the coin: anyone with genuine freedom of will can set his own will against God's and thus oppose God.
In that case, God determines only the existence of these beings who have rebelled against Him, but not the quality of their existence: that is determined by the fact that they oppose God. The same is true of humanity after the Fall: each person's existence is determined by God's will, but the quality of that existence depends on the person himself, on his relationship with God. That is why the consequences of the sins people commit and of the evil associated with them cannot be attributed to God: evil comes from God only insofar as even evil people do not exist without His knowledge. Particular situations, however, are determined by human will, and God enters into them insofar as people themselves desire it.
That is why turning to God lies at the heart of repentance: not asking Him to stop doing evil, which God does not do, but asking Him to enter the life of a person or an entire nation and set a limit to the evil they have done without Him. Asking for such intervention by God is precisely the turning to Him without which there can be no question of repentance: remorse and regret for the sins committed are not enough on their own.