Beginning

32 After his acts of faithfulness toward God, Hezekiah faced the greatest challenge of his reign. Sennacherib, king of Assyria, invaded Judah and besieged the fortified cities intending to conquer them for himself. ² Realizing that Sennacherib would eventually reach Jerusalem, Hezekiah prepared the city for a long siege. ^3-4 First, the king’s officers and warriors with a large number of the people dammed the water sources, both springs and rivers, outside the city so that when the Assyrians came they could not readily use the water sources. ⁵ Second, Hezekiah reinforced the city by repairing the existing wall structure which surrounded the city, building towers for offensive position, and erecting another wall far outside the main city wall. Between the two walls, he strengthened the city’s millo.

Third he cast new weapons and shields in abundance. ⁶ Finally he appointed the military leaders over the people and commissioned them at the city gate.

The people were strengthened by the words of Hezekiah, king of Judah.

⁹ While Sennacherib, with his forces, was busy besieging Lachish in a bloody battle, the king of Assyria sent messengers to Jerusalem to persuade Hezekiah and all the Judahites to surrender.

¹⁶ Sennacherib’s servants continued blaspheming Hezekiah and the Eternal God. ^17-19 The Assyrian king himself wrote additional letters insulting the Eternal God of Israel, reminding the people that no god had ever saved his people from the Assyrians, and Israel’s God couldn’t either. Furthermore, Sennacherib wrote that God was a creation of humans, just as all the other pagan gods are. These letters were shouted in the common Judahite language of Hebrew as the people of Jerusalem stood on the city wall listening. The messengers thought their words would terrify and disturb the people into surrendering the city.

²⁰ But King Hezekiah and Isaiah the prophet, son of Amoz, were not threatened by the Assyrians’ words. They relied on their God and called to heaven for help. ²¹ The Eternal responded quickly, sending a heavenly messenger to slaughter every Assyrian soldier, commander, and officer. Having been decidedly defeated by the very God he had taunted, Sennacherib, in shame, journeyed back to Assyria. In the security of his own god’s temple, Sennacherib was stabbed to death by his own children. ²² In this decisive way, the Eternal saved Hezekiah and Jerusalem from Sennacherib’s attempted conquest and any other nation’s imperial intentions. So God provided for His people by those around Judah. ²³ Many people brought gifts to the Eternal and Hezekiah in Jerusalem, so that other nations recognized the king’s authority.

^24-26 Hezekiah became proud and neglected to appreciate the gifts he received. So the Eternal was angry with him and all of Jerusalem and Judah. When Hezekiah became deathly ill, he realized what he had done wrong. He humbled himself and prayed to the Eternal, who answered the prayer and healed him as a sign. The people of Jerusalem and Judah also humbled themselves so that He was no longer angry with His people during Hezekiah’s days. ^27-29 In fact, the True God blessed them with great wealth and honor. Hezekiah filled his treasuries with silver, gold, gems, spices, shields, and other valuables. He filled his storehouses with grain, wine, and oil. His stables contained all kinds of cattle and flocks. Then Hezekiah built more cities and acquired more flocks and herds. ³⁰ He also dammed the Gihon River and diverted its waters to the west side of Jerusalem. Hezekiah was successful at all his endeavors.

³¹ Later, when the rulers of Babylon sent diplomats to learn about the miraculous sign given at Hezekiah’s healing when the sun moved backwards,^[a] the True God left Hezekiah and tested the king’s heart and devotion to Him.

³² The other actions and devotion of King Hezekiah, from his birth to his death, are recorded in the vision of Isaiah the prophet (son of Amoz) in the book of the kings of Israel and Judah. ³³ Hezekiah joined his ancestors in death and was laid in an upper tomb, a place of honor, with the descendants of David. He was mourned by all Judah and all Jerusalem. Hezekiah’s son Manasseh reigned in his place.

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^[c] 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.^[d]

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.

34 Josiah was 8 years old when he became king, and he reigned 31 years in Jerusalem. ² He was one of the few great kings of Israel, who determinedly obeyed the Eternal and followed the example of his ancestor David. ^3-4 His zeal for the True God of David began in the 8th year of his reign while he was still a child of 16, but he did not begin his reforms of Judah and Jerusalem until he was 20 years old. Then he removed the high places, chopped down the sacrificial altars and incense altars of the Baals, and smashed the carved and molten images of Asherah and other gods. He then took the broken pieces of the icons, crushed them into powder, and sprinkled that powder on the graves of the people who had worshiped them. ⁵ He even burned the bones of the priests who had served those gods on the cultic altars to completely purge Judah and Jerusalem. ⁶ He then continued his reforms throughout the region, including Manasseh, Ephraim, Simeon, and Naphtali and their surrounding villages, ⁷ where he personally smashed the carved images of Asherah and other gods into powder and chopped down the incense altars. Then he returned to Jerusalem.

⁸ By the 18th year of his reign, Josiah had cleansed the nation and the temple. Now it was time to repair them both by rebuilding the temple. He sent Shaphan (son of Azaliah), Maaseiah (a city official), and Joah (son of Joahaz the recorder) to the temple of the True God, the Eternal, in order to organize repairs there. ⁹ First, they took the money from the temple coffers and gave it to Hilkiah, the high priest, so he could oversee the funds for the temple repairs. The money had been collected at the temple by the Levite doorkeepers from those remaining in the Northern Kingdom, including Manasseh and Ephraim, and from all those in the Southern Kingdom, including Judah, Benjamin, and the city of Jerusalem. ¹⁰ The money went to the Eternal’s temple construction supervisors who then subcontracted the work to tradesmen and craftsmen. ¹¹ Those subcontractors purchased cut stone, timber, and couplings to rebuild the portions of the temple that had become ruined because of the neglect by the kings of Judah. ¹² The subcontractors were dependable workers, following the guidance of their supervisors: Jahath and Obadiah (Levites from the clan of Merari), Zechariah and Meshullam (Levites from the clan of Kohath), and the Levite musicians. ¹³ These supervisors guided everyone on the job, from the subcontractors and foremen to the unskilled laborers, while performing their regular duties of record keepers, officials, and gatekeepers.

¹⁴ As Josiah’s three servants were bringing out the money from the Eternal’s treasury, Hilkiah the priest made an unexpected discovery. Deep inside the temple storerooms, long forgotten, was the Eternal’s law book, rules He had given to the Israelites through Moses.

Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan, ¹⁶ who took it to the king and affirmed that they were proceeding with the temple repairs.

Shaphan then read these laws in the presence of the king.

¹⁹ When the king heard those words, he realized how far his nation had drifted from God’s path, and he tore his clothes in mourning. ²⁰ He then summoned five of his high-ranking officials: Hilkiah, Ahikam (son of Shaphan), Abdon (son of Micah), Shaphan the scribe, and Asaiah the king’s servant.

²² The four men including Hilkiah went straight to Huldah the prophetess in Jerusalem’s Second Quarter because they knew He would speak through her. Huldah was the wife of Shallum (son of Tokhath, son of Hasrah, the keeper of the wardrobe).

The four servants gave the king this message, ²⁹ and he immediately summoned all the elders in Judah and Jerusalem. ³⁰ The entire nation (great and small, priest and layman, man and woman) went up to the Eternal’s temple where Josiah read to them the laws from the book of the covenant that was found in the Eternal’s temple. ^31-32 There, the king and the entire assembly in Jerusalem, people from Benjamin and Judah, stood and renewed Israel’s covenant with the Eternal, promising to follow His ways, obey His laws with all diligence, and perform the duties of the covenant described in the book. Then all the people in Jerusalem respected their covenant with the True God, the God of their ancestors, ³³ and Josiah purged all the lands of Israel of false worship, making certain everyone in Israel served the Eternal God. The people remained faithful to the Eternal God of their ancestors throughout Josiah’s reign.