We’ve come to the reign of Manasseh in 2 Kings 21, the son of Hezekiah.
• 6 more kings after him and that will be the end of JUDAH.
• Manasseh is the longest reigning King of Judah (and Israel), 55 years in all.
• He did great evil in the sight of the Lord, probably the greatest (evil) of all the kings of Judah.
Read 2 Kings 21:1-9
Manasseh reversed everything that his father did. He wiped out all of Hezekiah’s reforms. The author itemises Manasseh’s apostasy one by one.
• He rebuilt the high places that his father had destroyed.
• He erected altars to Baal and worshipped all the starry hosts.
He desecrated the Temple of the Lord when he carved out an Asherah pole (Canaanite fertility goddess) and placed it inside the Temple (21:7).
• He had the audacity to put an idol before the face of God.
• And in the Temple courts he built altars of worship to all the starry hosts.
• The author said it twice (21:4 and 21:7) that this is the Temple of the Lord, that the Lord has said He would put His Name, to King David and Solomon.
• It is the sacred place of worship of Yahweh, the God of Israel but Manasseh brought everything in.
And he also sacrificed his own son in the fire, practiced sorcery and divination, consulted mediums and spiritists (21:6).
• 21:2 He followed the detestable practices, not just of the kings before him, but the nations the Lord had driven out before the Israelites.
• 21:9 Manasseh led the people astray, so that they did MORE evil than the nations the Lord had destroyed before the Israelites.
• 21:11 The Lord says Manasseh has done MORE evil than the Amorites (the Canaanites) who preceded him, who were here in this land before them.
Let’s flash back to what the Lord said, before they enter Canaan:
• Num 33:50-52 50On the plains of Moab by the Jordan across from Jericho the LORD said to Moses, 51"Speak to the Israelites and say to them: `When you cross the Jordan into Canaan, 52drive out all the inhabitants of the land before you. Destroy all their carved images and their cast idols, and demolish all their high places.
• Deut 18:9-13 9When you enter the land the LORD your God is giving you, do not learn to imitate the detestable ways of the nations there.10Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft,11or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. 12Anyone who does these things is detestable to the LORD, and because of these detestable practices the LORD your God will drive out those nations before you. 13You must be blameless before the LORD your God.
• So if God judges Judah here, He is not springing any surprises.
But now, not only did Manasseh led Judah into bringing all the idols and detestable practices back, they surpassed them.
• Manasseh wasn’t compared to his predecessors, the evil kings before him in Judah or Israel, but with the Amorites, the Canaanites. And he did more evil than them!
• In other words, the generation of Manasseh did more evil than anyone else in all history, both inside the Promised Land and outside.
• It’s like the consolidation of everything that’s idolatrous that we have seen in Israel and Judah, and over the generations, and cumulating in one reign under this one man.
Scary, right? Manasseh has completely no regard for God nor for man.
• And he has the longest reign, among the kings in Judah and Israel combined.
We don’t know why. Our finite and logical mind would want God to remove him quickly. Send some enemies and kill him in a war, or inflict a sickness, or let someone from within assassinate him, like what we have read before in Israel.
• But God did not say anything. Some felt God might be punishing them already, by given them a wicked king to torment them. But we can only guess.
• God did not say WHY the most wicked of kings was allowed to reign the longest.
• But we do have a shocking twist at the very end, something we don’t expect.
God will judge, ultimately. He always does. Just not always in the way we like.
Read 2 Kings 21:10-18
Again we see God’s mercy preceding His judgement. God warns through His servants the prophets (21:10).
• We have little record of the words of prophets in Manasseh’s reign, even though it’s the longest. We believe they have been silenced or martyred by the King.
• But again we see God’s warnings to the sinful before He judges. God warns because He wants to redeem and not condemn.
Manasseh represents the pinnacle of Judah’s cumulative sin (apostasy) over her entire history. And here we have God declaring His judgment.
• The Lord says the measuring line He used against Samaria (Israel) and against the most wicked king Ahab and his dynasty (Israel), will be used against Judah.
• Jerusalem will be wiped off and the people taken away as captives, and the place looted and plundered.
It is not a judgement against Manasseh alone, but against Judah.
• 21:9 “But the people did not listen.” 21:15 “Because they have done evil in My eyes and have provoked me to anger from the day their forefathers came out of Egypt until this day.”
• This is the prophetic judgement of God.
The subsequent kings that comes after Manasseh would not be able to ward off God’s wrath and His declared will anymore.
• King Josiah (Manasseh’s grandson) did honour God and bring about a revival (chapter 22-23) but that was insufficient to overcome the momentum and the effect of Manasseh’s 55 years of damage.
• 2 Kings 23:26-27 “26Nevertheless, the LORD did not turn away from the heat of his fierce anger, which burned against Judah because of all that Manasseh had done to provoke him to anger. 27So the LORD said, "I will remove Judah also from my presence as I removed Israel, and I will reject Jerusalem, the city I chose, and this temple, about which I said, `There shall my Name be.'"
Eventually when King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon invaded the land, the author said:
• 2 Kings 24:3-4 3Surely these things happened to Judah according to the LORD's command, in order to remove them from his presence because of the sins of Manasseh and all he had done, 4including the shedding of innocent blood. For he had filled Jerusalem with innocent blood, and the LORD was not willing to forgive.
Manasseh’s wickedness pushes Judah to the point of no return.
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What happened to Manasseh at the end? Let’s read 2 Chron 33:10-20.
Manasseh was captured by the Assyrians. Under distress, he humbled himself greatly before God and repented.
• God answered his prayer and he was released back to Jerusalem, as a puppet king.
• Manasseh proved that his repentance was genuine. He removed the foreign gods and the image from the Temple of God and tore down all altars.
• He reinstated the worship of God and urged the people to serve Him.
33:13 “Then Manasseh knew that the Lord is God.” This was unbelievable. The turn-around was totally unexpected, almost to the point of being distasteful to us.
• We know how evil he has been. We know the damage he has caused. We don’t like it but it’s true.
• And that’s probably the one thing God wants us to understand - no one is beyond hope. We cannot write anyone off before their time.
• The most wicked kings can still find God’s grace. The most undeserving can still be forgiven. That’s the awesome grace of God to anyone who is willing to repent.
• Any other way, will make Christianity into another religion of good works and self-efforts.
Manasseh’s repentance, sadly, was too late to change the great damage that he has done to Judah over his long reign.
• It was too short and too weak, too little and too late, to make an impact.
• This is going to be a personal salvation and not a national revival.
2 Chron 33:19 “His prayer and how God was moved by his entreaty, as well as all his sins and unfaithfulness, and the sites where he built high places and set up Asherah poles and idols before he humbled himself-all are written in the records of the seers.”
• People will remember him for the things he has done before his repentance.
Even the author of 2 Kings decides to write his summary line for Manasseh differently.
• Usually the line goes like this, “As for the other events of so-and-so, all that he did and his achievements…”
• But for Manasseh - 21:17 “As for the other events of Manasseh's reign, and all he did, including the sin he committed, are they not written in the book of the annals of the kings of Judah?”
Only Manasseh has this special notation. Not that the other kings did not sin, but that Manasseh did so much evil we cannot talk about him without mentioning it.
• That’s the memory Manasseh left behind - not his repentance but his wickedness.
2 Kings did not even bother to mention his late repentance. It makes little difference.
• Not that his personal salvation was nothing, or that his last minute reforms were unnecessary, but that they did not make an impact.
We see that in the next generation. When Amon his son took the throne, we read in 2 Kings 21:20-22.
• 20He did evil in the eyes of the LORD, as his father Manasseh had done. 21He walked in all the ways of his father; he worshiped the idols his father had worshiped, and bowed down to them. 22He forsook the LORD, the God of his fathers, and did not walk in the way of the LORD.
• That’s the legacy he left behind, actually. People learnt and remembered that.
What are we going to leave behind? When we are gone, what will people remember us for? Or what will we rather have people remember us for?
• Let’s make a lasting, spiritual impact while we still can.
• Manasseh’s late repentance shows us no one is beyond the hope of salvation.
