A Devotional Thought from The Lamentations of Jeremiah
Look at this terrible description of literal judgment.
Our inheritance is turned to strangers, our houses to aliens. We are orphans and fatherless, our mothers are as widows. We have drunken our water for money; our wood is sold unto us. Our necks are under persecution; we labor, and have no rest. We have given the hand to the Egyptians, and to the Assyrians, to be satisfied with bread. Our fathers have sinned, and are not; and we have borne their iniquities. Servants have ruled over us: there is none that doth deliver us out of their hand. We gat our bread with the peril of our lives because of the sword of the wilderness. Our skin was black like an oven because of the terrible famine. They ravish the women in Zion, and the maids in the cities of Judah. Princes are hanged up by their hand: the faces of elders were not honored. They took the young men to grind, and the children fell under the wood. The elders have ceased from the gate, young men from their music. The joy of our heart is ceased; our dance is turned into morning. The crown is fallen from our head: woe unto us that we have sinned! 
Lamentations 5:2-16
This sounds like images from a sci-fi movie showing the devastation of a future time, or scenes from a violent video game, or the ancient destruction committed by an invading horde (which is what it is). Isn't it striking that Jeremiah, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit of God, equates these terrible circumstances with the results of one generation suffering for the sins of another? And his confession in verse 16 that even the suffering generation had sinned? No need for preachers' moralizing here, modern people should read this for themselves and turn from sin.