The lesson taught in this verse is that the Lord takes an interest in the affairs of nations as well as individuals, and that national prosperity is the result of loyalty to God, while godlessness certainly brings disasters upon nations.
How strikingly this great truth is illustrated in the history of the American natives!
In North America, in Central and South America we find evidences of great culture—ruins of a civilization long ago forgotten. The Pueblo type with its center in upper Rio Grande Valley, the Aztec type in the stretch of country between the Rio Grande and Lake Nicaragua, the Maya type in Yucatan, the Nahua type in Mexico, the Panama and Colombia types in those countries, the Inca type in Peru and the Bolivia type further south—all these, with their achievements in architecture, sculpture, agriculture, spinning, weaving, their skill in forming stone implements and pottery, their rudimentary writing, their ingenious calendars, and their social and religious institutions, testify to prosperity and progression. But degeneration followed in the footsteps of idolatry, sensuality and autocracy and wars and bloodshed completed the destruction.