2 Kings 21:1-9
He built again the high places
Everything his father destroyed is reversed by name, and then he goes further, putting altars for the host of heaven in the two courts and a carved image in the house itself.
People of the Bible
Manasseh
Reigned fifty-five years, the longest of any king of Judah, and undid his father’s reform item by item.
Manasseh is twelve when he begins to reign and he rebuilds every high place his father had broken down. He raises altars for Baal, makes a grove, builds altars for the host of heaven inside both courts of the house of the LORD, puts a carved image in the house itself, passes his son through the fire, uses enchantments and deals with spirits. Kings says he seduced them to do more evil than the nations the LORD destroyed before Israel, and that he filled Jerusalem with innocent blood from one end to another.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Manasseh
- 01
- 02
2 Kings 21:10-16
The line of Samaria and the plummet of Ahab
The measuring tools of the north are to be used on Jerusalem. God will wipe it as a man wipes a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down.
- 03
2 Chronicles 33:10-13
Among the thorns, with hooks
Carried to Babylon in bronze fetters. In his affliction he prayed and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers, and was heard and brought back.
- 04
2 Chronicles 33:14-17
He took away the strange gods
Back in Jerusalem he builds a wall, removes the idols and the altar he had put in the house, repairs the altar of the LORD and commands Judah to serve him. The people still sacrifice in the high places.
Why it matters
Kings gives him no way back and names him as the reason the exile is no longer avoidable, even after Josiah’s reform. Chronicles adds what Kings does not: that Assyria took him with hooks and bound him in bronze and carried him to Babylon, and that in his affliction he besought the LORD and humbled himself greatly, and was brought back to Jerusalem, and then knew that the LORD was God. Both accounts stand, and the second does not cancel the sentence in the first.
1 song
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
