Matthew Poole and continuators on Lamentations 3:22

22 ¶ It is of the LORDs mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not .

Mercy is nothing else but love flowing freely from any, to persons in misery, and differs from compassion onely in the freeness of the emanation. It is not because God had not power enough utterly to have consumed us, nor because we had not guilt enough to have provoked his Justice to have put an end to our lives, as well as to the lives of many thousands of our Countrymen, but it is meerly from the Lords free love and pity to us in our miseries. If God had not a blessing in store for us, how is it that we are captives and not slain as many others were during the siege?

Marginal references: Mal. 3.6.