What Hezekiah Removed, Manasseh Restores

Fifty five years is the longest reign of any king of Israel or Judah, probably including a coregency with Hezekiah in his father's last decade. Hephzibah means “my delight is in her”, a name Isaiah 62:4 later gives to restored Jerusalem.

The comparison is not with the kings of Israel, the usual measure, but with the Canaanites themselves. Manasseh is judged against the peoples whose practices cost them the land.

Ahab is the only king of Israel named as a model here; his Baal altar and Asherah (1 Kings 16:32–33) are reproduced by a son of David. Worship of the host of heaven had spread under Assyrian influence, where astral cults were prominent.

The quotation comes from the LORD's answer to Solomon's prayer (1 Kings 9:3) and from Deuteronomy's “place which the LORD shall choose” to put his name there. Altars to other gods sit in the one house chosen for the one name.

“The two courts” are the inner priests' court and the great outer court (1 Kings 6:36; 7:12). Josiah will pull down these very altars (23:12), which shows they survived Manasseh's reign.

Five forbidden arts are listed, and every one appears in Deuteronomy 18:10–11. “Observed times” is soothsaying, perhaps reading clouds; “familiar spirits” are ghosts consulted through a medium, the art Saul sought at Endor (1 Samuel 28:7).

The Asherah image stood in the house itself, not merely in its courts. The Hebrew quotation says “for ever”, the word the LORD had used of his name dwelling there (1 Kings 9:3), which makes the image a direct contradiction of that permanence.

The promise not to make Israel's feet wander echoes 2 Samuel 7:10, where the LORD promised David to plant Israel so they would move no more. The condition clause, “only if they will observe”, carries the weight of the whole verse.

“Seduced” is ta'ah, to lead astray or make wander, the same root as the feet wandering from the land in verse 8. Leading them astray from the law is what makes them wander from the land.

The prophets are not named. Chronicles says only that the LORD spoke to Manasseh and his people and they would not listen (2 Chronicles 33:10). Jewish tradition held that Manasseh had Isaiah sawn in two, an echo perhaps found in Hebrews 11:37.

The Amorites are Genesis 15:16's shorthand for the nations of Canaan, whose iniquity was “not yet full” in Abraham's day. Manasseh has outdone the people whose sin once filled the measure that cost them the land.

The tingling ears phrase is used once before, of the judgment on Eli's house and the loss of the ark (1 Samuel 3:11), and again by Jeremiah of the valley of Hinnom (Jeremiah 19:3). News so shocking it rings in the listener's head.

The line and plummet were a builder's tools for checking straightness, used here in reverse: to mark what will be torn down, as in Amos 7:7–9. Samaria and Ahab's house, both destroyed completely, set the standard.

“Forsake” is natash, to cast off or abandon, a verb Samuel once used in the negative: the LORD will not forsake his people for his great name's sake (1 Samuel 12:22). The remnant of the inheritance is what survived Assyria, now to be given up.

The span, “since the day their fathers came forth out of Egypt”, extends the charge to the whole national history. It repeats the logic of 17:7, where Israel's exile was also traced back to the exodus.

Josephus says Manasseh killed prophets daily. The phrase “from one end to another” is literally “from mouth to mouth”, filled like a vessel to the brim. 24:4 names this blood as the one sin the LORD would not pardon.

“His sin that he sinned” is an addition to the usual closing formula, as if the record could not close without naming it once more. 2 Chronicles 33:11–19 records a captivity in Babylon, Manasseh's repentance and his prayer, none of which the Book of 2 Kings reports.

Manasseh is not buried in the city of David with his fathers, as nearly every king before him was. Uzza may be a shortened form of Uzziah, who was buried apart because of leprosy, or the name of a garden owner otherwise unknown.

Jotbah may be Jotbathah in the Negev or a site in Galilee; if the latter, the queen mother came from former northern territory. Amon's name matches the Egyptian god Amun, perhaps chosen deliberately by Manasseh, though it can also be read as Hebrew for faithful.

One of the briefest verdicts in the book, measured not against the heathen or Jeroboam but against his own father. Chronicles adds that Amon did not humble himself as Manasseh did (2 Chronicles 33:23).

The verse repeats “his father” three times: walked, served, worshipped, each done as his father did. The imitation is complete, which leaves nothing further to say about his reign.

“The LORD God of his fathers” includes Hezekiah and David; by following one father Amon abandons all the others. The phrase for walking “not in the way of the LORD” completes a pairing with verse 21's walking in his father's way.

“Servants” means court officials, as with the conspirators who killed Joash (12:20). No motive is given; some historians suspect a pro-Egyptian or anti-Assyrian faction, but the text is silent.

“The people of the land” are Judah's landowning citizens, who also put Joash on the throne (11:14–20) and later Jehoahaz (23:30). The phrase appears twice here, making them the decisive actors in both the punishment and the coronation.

No deed of Amon is recorded apart from his idolatry, and his reign of two years left no achievement worth listing, only this formula. The book of the chronicles cited is a lost royal record, not the biblical Chronicles.

Amon is buried in the same garden of Uzza as his father, the second king buried outside the royal tombs. His son Josiah, only eight years old (22:1), inherits the throne and the whole of Manasseh's legacy.