This was the inevitable culmination of the policy of the Kingdom of Judah under her latest monarchs. The position of their land laid them open to conflicts with the powers of Assyria and Babylon. The wise and peaceful policy of Solomon had been departed from, and indeed rendered impossible by the disruption of the Tribes. A period of national decadence seems to have followed, in which luxury and corruption undermined all political sanity, and both rulers and people became blind to the dangers that threatened. Such religion as existed, only expressed itself in bursts of fanaticism, and filled the people with the fatal idea that Jehovah would never suffer the Temple to be violated or the holy city to be taken. The disaster of the Exile is charged by the Prophets to the unrepented sins of the nation, and while this is a religious interpretation it is not unsupported by a review of the history. The people had set their hearts upon a glorious kingdom of material prosperity, presided over and protected by a mighty national deity; the Prophets wanted a kingdom of righteousness, which would reflect the character of Jehovah and be a witness to the nations of His reality and power. While they saw in the Exile a calamity which meant the destruction of the nation, and an evidence that Jehovah had broken His covenant because of disobedience, they clung to the belief that the end for which Jehovah had chosen Israel might still be attained. That nation might be destroyed, yet from its ruins there would arise a Kingdom of God; a remnant would return, weaned from a false religion, to work out a new ideal of holiness and service.