33 Manasseh was 12 years old when he became king, and he reigned 55 years in Jerusalem, the longest of any king in Israel. ² He behaved wickedly before the Eternal, acting with the same abominations as the previous nations did before the Eternal gave their land to Israel. ³ He reversed the good deeds of Hezekiah, rebuilding the high places and altars for the Baals and hoisting carved images of Asherah into the skies. He worshiped all the celestial bodies as false deities. ^4-5 He even desecrated the Eternal’s temple, the place honoring His reputation which was to remain in Jerusalem forever, by building pagan altars in two courts there. ⁶ In the valley of Ben-hinnom, Manasseh offered his children as burnt offerings to those false gods and used every form of magic: witchcraft, divination, sorcery, and necromancy. Manasseh’s evil actions infuriated the Eternal, but the worst of his actions was ⁷ his installation of an image of a statue in the True God’s temple. Many years before when His glory entered the temple for the first time, God had spoken.

⁹ Manasseh corrupted Judah and the people of Jerusalem until they were more evil than the nations whom the Eternal had destroyed before the Israelites. ¹⁰ Their minds were so full of sin that they didn’t hear the Eternal asking them to return to His ways. ¹¹ So to get their attention, the Eternal used the Assyrian army to express His anger. The commanders captured Manasseh, forced a ring through his nose, bound his limbs with bronze chains, and carried him to Babylon as if he were an animal. ¹² From this position of complete powerlessness, Manasseh finally humbled himself and begged the forgiveness of the Eternal God of his fathers. ¹³ He heard Manasseh’s prayer and found it sincere; He returned Manasseh to the throne in Jerusalem. From that day forward, Manasseh never doubted that the Eternal was the True God.

¹⁴ Having returned to proper faith, Manasseh continued his father’s work. He finished building the outer city wall from the west side of the Gihon River through the valley to the fish gate. Then he built high walls around the hill of Ophel^[b] and stationed commanders at each fortified city in Judah. ¹⁵ Then Manasseh began to purge the nation of the sin he had brought there. He tore out the idols from inside the Eternal’s temple and the foreign altars from the temple mount and in Jerusalem, disposing of them outside the city. ¹⁶ He then restored the Eternal’s altar and gave grateful offerings of peace and praise there. Even though Manasseh ordered the Judahites to serve only the Eternal God of Israel in the way that He commanded, ¹⁷ they continued to sacrifice to the Eternal God at other high places instead of only in Jerusalem.

¹⁸ The other actions of Manasseh, from his birth to his death, including his prayer to his True God and the oracles of the seers, those proclaiming the reputation of the Eternal God of Israel, are recorded in the chronicles of the kings of Israel. ¹⁹ His prayer, the True God’s compassion, and a record of his sins, unfaithfulness, and the locations of the high places and cultic statues, before he humbled himself, are written in the chronicles of Hozai.^[c]

²⁰ But when Manasseh joined his ancestors in death, the people buried him in his house, not in the tombs with his ancestors. His son Amon reigned in his place.

²¹ Amon was 22 years old when he began his short two-year reign in Jerusalem. ²² Like his father, Manasseh, Amon committed evil acts before the Eternal by serving and sacrificing to Manasseh’s carved cultic images. ²³ But unlike his father, Amon did not recognize his sins and humble himself. In fact, his guilt was so prolific ²⁴ that his own servants murdered him in the palace.

²⁵ So the people killed the conspirators for their betrayal of King Amon and anointed Amon’s son Josiah as king instead.