8aand I will not again remove the foot of Israel from the land which I have appointed for your fathers—only if they are careful to do all that I have commanded them, according to the whole law and the statutes and the ordinances by the hand of Moses.”
9 So Manasseh seduced Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to do more evil than the nations whom the Lord had destroyed before the children of Israel.
Manasseh Restored After Repentance
10 And the Lord spoke to Manasseh and his people, but they would not1 listen.
11aTherefore the Lord brought upon them the captains of the army of the king of Assyria, who took Manasseh with hooks, bbound him with bronze fetters, and carried him off to Babylon.
12 Now when he was in affliction, he implored the Lord his God, and ahumbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers,
13 and prayed to Him; and He areceived his entreaty, heard his supplication, and brought him back to Jerusalem into his kingdom. Then Manasseh bknew that the Lordwas God.
14 After this he built a wall outside the City of David on the west side of aGihon, in the valley, as far as the entrance of the Fish Gate; and itbenclosed Ophel, and he raised it to a very great height. Then he put military captains in all the fortified cities of Judah.
15 He took away athe foreign gods and the idol from the house of the Lord, and all the altars that he had built in the mount of the house of the Lord and in Jerusalem; and he cast them out of the city.
16 He also repaired the altar of the Lord, sacrificed peace offerings and athank offerings on it, and commanded Judah to serve the Lord God of Israel.
17aNevertheless the people still sacrificed on the1 high places, but only to the Lord their God.
Death of Manasseh
18 Now the rest of the acts of Manasseh, his prayer to his God, and the words of athe seers who spoke to him in the name of the Lord God of Israel, indeed they arewritten in the1 book of the kings of Israel.
19 Also his prayer and howGod received his entreaty, and all his sin and trespass, and the sites where he built1 high places and set up wooden images and carved images, before he was humbled, indeed they are written among the sayings of2 Hozai.
20aSo Manasseh rested with his fathers, and they buried him in his own house. Then his son Amon reigned in his place.
Amon’s Reign and Death
21aAmon was twenty-two years old when he became king, and he reigned two years in Jerusalem.
It would be hard to name a king of Israel or Judah who led his nation into more evil. Yet, incredible as it is, God's Word reveals that Manasseh repented of much of it. His repentance was not a hollow one. He changed so completely that he did a complete turn-around, tearing down the idols he had erected previously and making God's commanded sacrifices at the Temple. Nowhere is he directly evaluated as doing good in God's sight, but he did some good works to clean up some of the evil mess he had created. God's evaluation of him seems to be softened considerably, considering what could have been recorded.
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