No one (save a few stalwart prophets) in either Israel or Judah ever imagined that time would run out on their kingdoms. In like manner, far away to the northeast, the growing kingdom of Assyria, and to the east, the growing kingdom of Babylon, also vainly imagined that they would take the world and then live forever.
Far above them all, though, beyond the moon, the sun, the stars, and the physical universe itself, God sat, as it were, with a divine hourglass in His hand. It took a mere flick of His wrist to send both Israel and Judah's sands tumbling into the abyss of captivity in Assyria and Babylon.
It would later take another mere flick of the wrist to send the sands of Assyria and Babylon forever into the abyss, while His people flowed home.