Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

Psalm 66

For the music leader. A song. A psalm.

Manasseh rules Judah

21 Manasseh was 12 years old when he became king, and he ruled for fifty-five years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Hephzibah. ² He did what was evil in the Lord’s eyes, imitating the detestable practices of the nations that the Lord had driven out before the Israelites. ³ He rebuilt the shrines that his father Hezekiah had destroyed, set up altars for Baal, and made a sacred pole,^[a] just as Israel’s King Ahab had done. He bowed down to all the stars in the sky and worshipped them. ⁴ He even built altars in the two courtyards of the Lord’s temple—the very place the Lord was speaking of when he said: “I will put my name in Jerusalem.” ⁵ Manasseh built altars for all the stars in the sky in both courtyards of the Lord’s temple. ⁶ He burned his own son alive, consulted sign readers and fortune-tellers, and used mediums and diviners. He did much evil in the Lord’s eyes and made him angry.

⁷ Manasseh set up the carved Asherah image he had made in the temple—the very temple the Lord had spoken about to David and his son Solomon, saying, In this temple and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all Israel’s tribes, I will put my name forever. ⁸ I will never again remove Israel from the land I gave to their ancestors, provided they carefully do everything I have commanded them—keeping all the Instruction my servant Moses commanded them. ⁹ But they wouldn’t listen. Manasseh led them into doing even more evil than the nations the Lord had wiped out before the Israelites.

¹⁰ The Lord spoke through his servants the prophets: ¹¹ Judah’s King Manasseh has done detestable things, things more evil than the Amorites had done before his time. He has caused Judah to sin with his images. ¹² Because of this, the Lord, Israel’s God, has said: I’m about to bring on Jerusalem and Judah such a great disaster that the ears of anyone who hears about it will ring. ¹³ I will stretch out over Jerusalem the same line that I used to measure Samaria and the same mason’s level that I used on Ahab’s family. I will wipe Jerusalem clean the same way someone wipes a plate clean, wiping it clean then turning it facedown. ¹⁴ Whatever survives of my inheritance, I’ll leave behind, handing them over to their enemies. They will be nothing but plunder and loot for every one of their enemies. ¹⁵ This will happen because they have done what is evil in my eyes, making me angry from the day their ancestors left Egypt until this very moment.

¹⁴ We know that the Law is spiritual, but I’m made of flesh and blood, and I’m sold as a slave to sin. ¹⁵ I don’t know what I’m doing, because I don’t do what I want to do. Instead, I do the thing that I hate. ¹⁶ But if I’m doing the thing that I don’t want to do, I’m agreeing that the Law is right. ¹⁷ But now I’m not the one doing it anymore. Instead, it’s sin that lives in me. ¹⁸ I know that good doesn’t live in me—that is, in my body. The desire to do good is inside of me, but I can’t do it. ¹⁹ I don’t do the good that I want to do, but I do the evil that I don’t want to do. ²⁰ But if I do the very thing that I don’t want to do, then I’m not the one doing it anymore. Instead, it is sin that lives in me that is doing it.

²¹ So I find that, as a rule, when I want to do what is good, evil is right there with me. ²² I gladly agree with the Law on the inside, ²³ but I see a different law at work in my body. It wages a war against the law of my mind and takes me prisoner with the law of sin that is in my body. ²⁴ I’m a miserable human being. Who will deliver me from this dead corpse? ²⁵ Thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then I’m a slave to God’s Law in my mind, but I’m a slave to sin’s law in my body.