Lamentations 1:9
Her filthiness is in her skirts; she remembereth not her last end; therefore she came down wonderfully: she had no comforter. O LORD, behold my affliction: for the enemy hath magnified himself. Her filthiness is in her skirts; she remembereth not her last end; therefore she came down wonderfully: she had no comforter. O LORD, behold my affliction: for the enemy hath magnified himself.
The verse belongs to the funeral song sung in a foreign land after the fall of Jerusalem, marking the end of the nation's former glory, which never returned. It belongs to the account of the awful sufferings that came upon Jerusalem's apostate people. It presents Jerusalem's ruin as the result of failure to consider what would come, with uncleanness exposed in her skirts, no comforter for her, and a cry to the Lord to behold affliction because the enemy has magnified himself.
Departing from the living God is in itself suicidal to a nation as well as to an individual, so that doom is fixed from internal causes. Grievous sin with filthiness openly present and failure to remember the last end brings a wonderful coming down and removal. This is seen in China as a tottering kingdom facing vassalage or partition because of its departure from God.