“I was angry with my people,
I profaned my inheritance and gave them into your hand.
You showed them no mercy.
You have very heavily laid your yoke on the aged.'”
At certain stages Babylon fronted for Assyria in oppressing God's people. It was to Babylon that Manasseh was taken in chains. But that was only the outward manifestation of an oppression that had been going on for years. And in Isaiah 39:6-7 Isaiah had demonstrated that Judah and Jerusalem were to be invaded by Babylon and stripped of their wealth because Hezekiah had been unable to resist showing it off. To God it was as though that also had already happened. But as ever with invaders they would overplay their hand and exact more than was reasonable. They would make the heaviest of demands extracting heavy tribute, and also possibly forced labour, from the old. The old were one of the classes for which God had a special care, and He expected the same attitude from others. ‘The aged' may, however, represent the distinguished leaders. This particular form of inhumanity is blamed on the Babylonians by Jeremiah twice in Lamentations 4:16; Lamentations 5:12, and in both cases he connects the word with a parallel term denoting rank or office, viz. priests and princes.
It should again be noted that there is no reference to the exile of the large numbers of citizens that did in fact take place, indicating that this was written before the event.
‘I was angry with my people.' That is He felt it necessary to punish their sins as they deserved. ‘I profaned my inheritance.' He allowed unclean Babylon to invade the land that was His inheritance. His own people had rendered it unclean, so He magnified its uncleanness.