Lamentations: the word speaks for itself. Something terrible, something literally beyond imagining, has befallen Jerusalem and its people.

“Befallen.” Exactly. The skies have fallen in. A proud clan, a proud city, lies in the dust. The temple is gutted, the walls of the holy city a rubble. Prophecy is stilled, at least for a time—a time that seems an eternity. The elders and priests—those proud links of tradition and sacrifice and psalm— are vanished from the scene, driven like cattle into slavery and exile.

National identity, or more exactly, imperial identity, is shattered.

It rested on unsteady piers, as was evident after the fact. Note the fact well, the symptoms of the Fall in Jerusalem: militarism, a rigid class system of the prosperous and the deprived, worship emptied of concern for “the widow and orphan and stranger at the gate.”

And perhaps most damaging of all, a naive assumption, common among the elite, that come what may, come war and greed and cruelties against the victimized—God was “on our side.” Familiar?

The conviction was simply taken for granted—irrefragable.

And why not? The temple was a world wonder, the sacrifices spectacular in their scope and artistry, song and dance and solemn proclamation of the law. World trade flourished, coffers of palace and temple were bulging.

The sky was the limit, literally. All signs pointed to divine approval.

But wait. God had news for the empire. On the horizon, a storm was gathering; its name was Babylon.