NOTES for Lam 3:22-23

All the later prophets said that the people of God exist only because of God's mercy. Indeed, if not for God's direct intervention in history, the Jewish people would hardly have formed as a people at all, and without God's intervention they would certainly have had no chance of surviving in the historical situation in which their historical path began. And later too the survival of the people often required God's direct intervention in their fate.

What determined this intervention? The covenant-union concluded at Sinai? Yes, of course. But this union was violated by the people more than once, and if all God's relations with His people had been reduced only to it, the Jewish people could not have counted on God's help. The author of Lamentations points to two grounds for intervention: God's mercy and His faithfulness.

The matter is, first of all, faithfulness to the union concluded at Sinai. Unlike His people, God remains faithful to it. And not only because He loves His people, but also because this people has become part of His plan, that grand plan of saving humanity and joining it to the life of the Kingdom, which cannot be allowed to fail.

God's faithfulness is inseparable from His mercy. The corresponding Hebrew word has a quite definite meaning. Mercy means readiness to do for a person more than he deserves, or more than he has a right to by law or according to a contract made with him. Mercy is a sign of love that gives without counting. It can belong to a human being too, but God's mercy, of course, is incomparable with human mercy, as the finite is incomparable with the infinite.

And one more thing is absolutely important: the actuality of a person's relations with God. According to the word of the author of the book, God's mercy is "new every morning." This is not surprising, since relations, whether relations with God or with a person, are always dynamic. If they are not active, not actual, if they are not here and now, then they no longer exist. Then God's mercy and His faithfulness will remain for a person only abstractions. But if God's mercy and His faithfulness depend entirely on God, the actuality and effectiveness of His relations with a person depend no less on the person himself. Little is required of a person: to trust God and let Him into his life. He will handle the rest.