Jeremiah Lamenting on Fall of Jerusalem, Rembrandt Playing Cards

The news arrived like a harbinger of doom, a whisper on the wind laced with the acrid tang of smoke and the metallic tang of blood. It came through a ragged messenger, a gaunt man with wild eyes and a voice hoarse from exertion. He stumbled into Jeremiah's secluded refuge, collapsing at the prophet's feet, his message a torrent of words choked with sobs. --- He wasn't there, amidst the dust and the chaos of Jerusalem, but the refugees who streamed into his secluded refuge painted a nightmarish scene. Weary faces, etched with terror, recounted the horrors they'd witnessed. The once vibrant city was reduced to a smouldering husk, the Temple Mount a pyre reaching towards a blood-red sky. --- They spoke of Nebuchadnezzar's relentless siege, the battering rams pulverising the walls, the Babylonian archers raining death from afar. The final breach was a tide of steel and fury, described in hushed tones that turned into shudders as they spoke of families torn apart. --- One woman, her voice raw with despair, spoke of Babylonian soldiers bursting into her home. Her husband, a coppersmith, was dragged away, his pleas for mercy unanswered. Her teenage sons, their eyes wide with terror, were cut down before her very eyes, their blood staining the once pristine floor. She spoke, voice dropping to a horrified whisper, of soldiers using the children like human shields against desperate defenders. --- Another man, his hand wrapped in a bloody rag, spoke of witnessing a soldier grab a young boy, no older than five, and hurl him from the city walls. The sickening thud of the child's body hitting the stones below echoed in his voice. Stories of mass crucifixions, of families impaled together on sharpened stakes as a grim warning, were recounted with trembling lips. --- Jeremiah, hunched over in his dimly lit hovel, listened, his hand instinctively going to his weathered face. Rembrandt captured this moment perfectly, the prophet a solitary figure swallowed by despair. The richly coloured robe he wore, a stark contrast to the devastation he heard described, seemed to mock the city's suffering. --- Through their tearful accounts, Jeremiah envisioned the streets choked with smoke, the glint of Babylonian armour under a burning sky. He heard the screams of the dying, the desperate pleas for mercy unanswered. The silence in his own hovel felt deafening in comparison. He pictured the once sacred ground of the Temple Mount, now a tableau of carnage, its holy stones blood-soaked testament to the brutality. --- Grief, a familiar weight settled on him. He had warned them, his pronouncements echoing in his mind. Yet, their arrogance had blinded them. Now, the holy city lay in ruins, the Ark of the Covenant, a symbol of their faith, lost. Hot tears welled in his eyes, a torrent of emotions threatening to drown him. --- But even in the desolation, a sliver of hope remained. The refugees, though broken, clung to their faith. Perhaps, Jeremiah thought, this exile, this crucible of suffering, would forge a new people, one tempered by hardship and ready to rebuild. He would be their voice, a beacon in the darkness, reminding them that even from the ashes, Jerusalem could rise again. --- Artwork is by Rembrandt Harmenszoon Van in Rijn 1606-1669 and is in public domain.