Yahweh has accomplished his wrath, he has poured out his fierce anger; He has kindled a fire in Zion, which has devoured the foundations of it.
"The kings of the earth believed not"  (Lamentations 4:12).  After all, the whole world was on the verge of believing in Israel's God. Look at what had happened!  God had brought them up out of Egypt in a spectacular deliverance that astounded all mankind.  Before them, he displaced the populations of Canaan, and settled them in Palestine.  Their second king had astounded the whole world with his magnificence.  No one, among the ancient populations, supposed that such a God would allow any nation to destroy his Temple and remove his people to another land.  Therein is the unmitigated tragedy of Israel's apostasy.  That apostasy required that God should destroy them; but when he did, the ancient notion that the physical defeat of any nation meant also the defeat of their god resulted in a terrible resurgence of paganism.  Israel's destruction meant that God would have to begin all over again in his campaign to redeem Adam's fallen race, a redemption that required, absolutely, that men should believe, worship and obey the true God.