Shealtiel, son of Jeconiah, the last living branch of the felled tree of David, stood alone on the slope of a hill. The smoke ate at his eyes, but he held firm. Tears were the portion of women and of feeble old men. His tears would have meant that the promise had lost its power.
Shealtiel could not see the flame greedily devouring the cedar beams of his fathers’ palace, but he felt fire on the tip of his tongue, tasted bitter ash. The dull thunder of falling walls raised memories dear to his heart: Solomon leading the Queen of Sheba out to the threshold, Jehoshaphat judging at the gates, his great-great-grandfather Hezekiah unrolling before the envoys the letter of Assyrian threats and going into the Temple. The archive of the kingdom was burning out without smoke.
The Babylonians worked methodically, as though taking an inventory of property. They took down the golden shields Solomon had brought from Ophir, pried loose the carved panels with their lilies and cherubim — the signs of the house of David. They carried out the throne of ivory.
Shealtiel waited for the earth to shudder, but it kept silent. In his chest, where the pride of an heir had lived, something crunched and gave way. History itself was collapsing — the history on which his personhood had rested.
The ground beneath his feet ceased to be firm. His mind, raised on glorious chronicles, now registered only the thinning density of the kingdom: the last stone bearing the mark of the royal builder, the last boundary post, the first plain where the law of Moses had never sounded. The air grew thick, bitter, and foreign, smelling of alien damp and raw brick.
The chapter goes on in the book.