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Lamentations 3:43-44 "Thou hast wrapped thyself with anger and pursued us, slaying without pity; thou hast wrapped thyself with a cloud so that no prayer can pass through."

 

When people think the God of the Old Testament is harsher than the God of the New Testament, it is because of things like this. A God who "slays without pity" does not seem like the loving and merciful God Jesus revealed to us. But remember, Revelation is in the New Testament, and that is chock full of dire chastisements. 

 

Jeremiah has seen the destruction of Jerusalem, he has seen the immense suffering of his people, he has seen them being "slayed without pity." Being a holy man, in tune with God, he knows that nothing happens without God's permission. So, while it wasn't God Himself who slew without pity, but the Babylonians, Jeremiah attributes it to God because God could have stopped it, He could have heard and answered the prayers of the faithful few and saved Judah, but He did not. To Jeremiah, God seems to have wrapped Himself in a cloud so prayer cannot pass through. 

 

God does not change. The God of the Old Testament is the same God that Jesus embodies. Jesus shows us the immense love the Father has for us, but that love existed from the beginning of time. God didn't start loving us when he sent His Son, rather He showed us His love through His Son. The cloud that Jeremiah senses is not of God's making, but ours. It is the very thing Jesus calls us to break through, and gives us the means to do so, in order to get back into right relationship with the Father.

 

Original sin created the cloud that seems to separate us from God. We intensify it with our sin and, when we are sinning so much that the cloud cannot be dispersed without a great chastisement, God allows that chastisement. Even that is an act of His love and mercy. Sometimes God knows that the only way we will come back to Him is through suffering, as he made very clear to Jeremiah, and reminds us again in Revelation.