Wherefore the wrath of the LORD was upon Judah and Jerusalem, and he hath delivered them to trouble, to astonishment, and to hissing, as ye see with your eyes.
Wherefore the wrath of the Lord was upon Judah and Jerusalem. This pious king had the discernment to ascribe all the national calamities that had befallen the kingdom to the true cause-namely, apostasy from God. The country had been laid waste by successive wars of invasion, and its resources drained-many families mourned members of their household still suffering the miseries of foreign captivity-all their former prosperity and glory had fled-and to what was this painful and humiliating state of affairs to be traced, but the manifest judgment of God upon the kingdom for its sins?