From the mouth of the Most High means “when God speaks, orders, commands.”

Evil is to be understood here as in Amos 3.6, “Does evil befall a city…?” in which evil is not moral evil but rather “disaster, misfortune, trouble.” The wording of both Revised Standard Version and Good News Translation may seem to say that God is responsible for moral evil. Perhaps a better rendering is New International Version, “Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both calamities and good things come?” The same emphasis is to be found in Isaiah 45.7: “I bring both blessing and disaster. I, the LORD, do all these things” (Good News Translation).

Quoted with permission from Reyburn, William D. A Handbook on Lamentations. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1992. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .