Jerusalem was originally destined to serve as a moral and spiritual lighthouse for the entire world. Instead of setting an example, the city sank into a deep moral decline, ultimately becoming more corrupt than the surrounding nations. God provided the Israelites with upright laws, but they actively chose to exchange this divine guidance for wickedness, replacing a life of truth with deliberate rebellion.
The divine system of Commandments is divided into two distinct categories. The first consists of judgments, which govern the relationships between people and are based on human logic and reason. The second category consists of statutes, which are duties directed toward God and have no obvious or revealed purpose [מלבי״ם]. In their spiritual descent, the people of Jerusalem adopted the worst customs of their neighboring nations, reaching a level of wickedness that actually exceeded that of the pagan societies around them [רש״י, מצודת דוד, ביאור שטיינזלץ].
There is a fundamental difference between the failures of the surrounding nations and the sins of Israel. The nations operate according to human customs and laws established by their own wise leaders. While these human laws are imperfect, the people following them are not intentionally rebelling against God, simply because they do not know His divine law. The Israelites, on the other hand, were privileged to receive God's direct laws, yet they turned their backs on Him, choosing to do the exact opposite with absolute contempt [מלבי״ם].
Furthermore, while the other nations never took the Torah upon themselves, the Israelites accepted it with a firm commitment and then broke that very promise [רש״י]. Another striking contrast lies in basic loyalty. The surrounding nations remain faithful to their own legal systems and do not despise them, whereas the Israelites actively rejected the laws given to them directly by their Creator [רד״ק].
This betrayal represents a clear and logical spiritual decline. By refusing to walk in the path of God's laws [מצודת דוד], the people demonstrated a complete collapse of values. Once they reached a state where they despised even the logical, rational judgments that govern human society, it was only natural and obvious that they would completely abandon the divine statutes that lack an apparent explanation [חומת אנך].