My eyes do fail with tears, my heart is troubled; My liver is poured on the earth, because of the destruction of the daughter of my people, Because the young children and the infants swoon in the streets of the city.
It was the religious failure which lay at the bottom of Israel's trouble.  Jerusalem had become worse than Sodom and Gomorrah  (Ezekiel 16). The Temple itself had become a center of idolatry, and the women of Judah were worshipping the vile goddess of the Assyrians in the precincts of the Temple itself.  (See a detailed account of all this in Vol. III (Ezekiel) of my commentary on the Major Prophets, pp. 87-91.)