Lamentations 1:10
The adversary hath spread out his hand upon all her pleasant things: for she hath seen that the heathen entered into her sanctuary, whom thou didst command that they should not enter into thy congregation. The adversary hath spread out his hand upon all her pleasant things: for she hath seen that the heathen entered into her sanctuary, whom thou didst command that they should not enter into thy congregation.
The chapter stands built as an acrostic in which each verse begins in order with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet. It belongs to the book's lament over the severe suffering of Jerusalem's people after their apostasy. It belongs to Israel's funeral song over the nation's ruin, marking the end of its former glory, which never returned. It belongs to the time of Jerusalem's dispersion and the desolation of its sanctuary, showing the severe judgment that came upon Jerusalem.
The adversary spreading his hand upon all her pleasant things means taking her treasured possessions, and the heathen entering her sanctuary means foreign nations entering the sanctuary where they had been forbidden to enter the congregation or sacred assembly. It describes the enemy seizing the temple's valued sacred things and foreign people entering a place from which they had been excluded, plundering and profaning the sanctuary. This plundering and profaning took place when the Babylonians conquered the city, reflecting the judgment that left the temple in ruins during the Babylonian destruction and captivity. The entry of heathen invaders into the Lord's sanctuary, although they had been commanded not to enter the sacred congregation, fulfilled earlier predictions and marked the sanctuary's desecration during Jerusalem's destruction.
The principle of an adversary seizing all of a nation's pleasant things is fulfilled in China being made vassal and tributary and partitioned by greater powers superior in diplomacy and military strength. Such loss comes not from outward force alone but from departing from the living God, which is suicidal to a nation as well as to an individual and fixes its doom from internal causes because of grievous sin. The seizing works out God's providence as governor among the nations to release a fourth of the human race from abject social and moral thraldom.