The More Things Stay The Same

"Manasseh was twelve years old when he began to reign, and reigned fifty and five years in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was Hephzibah." So for the next two generations after Hezekiah's death, Judah was ruled by his son Manasseh and as we read on in the twenty-first chapter of 2 Kings he didn't waste any time. Something interesting about all the kings we've reviewed here so far; at the end of whatever verse or verses start "X was Y years old when he began to reign" there's always a sentence about the king's mother (who would technically be the queen mother once her son came to the throne); even though you read nothing more than her name, the fact that you do indicates a silent respect -- often all many mothers get by society, I'm sorry to say -- for the role women play in raising their children.



After Hezekiah's purge of idols and all worship of anyone save the LORD in Judah, Manasseh doesn't seem to have had much trouble bringing the idols back, doing much identified in verse two as evil in God's sight and rebuilding the high places, the sacred areas to various local deities which until Hezekiah's reign had been quite a draw before he destroyed them. Why was it such a problem for all but a few kings to keep their focus (and largely their subjects' focus) on the LORD? Didn't some citizens of Judah -- heck, didn't the priests who led worship -- protest? Isaiah who had had Manasseh's father's ear undoubtedly did, but later in verse sixteen we see that Manasseh "shed innocent blood very much [i.e. had a lot of people killed for their protests], till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another; beside his sin wherewith he made Judah to sin, in doing that which was evil in the sight of the LORD."



Jewish and Christian tradition hold that Manasseh had Isaiah sawn in half, by the way. But Manasseh's mass murder as well as the people of Judah's complicity in it by turning a blind eye at best and acting in his name at worst was enough to reach the LORD Himself, and doubtless there were protesters Manasseh never reached who for deliverance. Manasseh's building of altars to all the host of heaven (hedging his bets by praying to every god, see verse five), making his son pass through fire in another pagan sacrifice, observing times, using enchantments, and dealing with familiar spirits and wizards -- soothsaying and witchcraft by any other name (see verse six), and setting a graven image in the Temple itself (see verse seven) along with the vast majority of the people's complicity in all this was the last straw for God.



"But THEY hearkened not." Verse nine begins with a blanket condemnation of all the people of Judah, those who refused to speak out against Manasseh's re-introduction of the high places, idols, et. al. as well as their leaders who were supposed to be appointed by God anyway! So the LORD tells the people through His prophets in verses eleven through sixteen that because Manasseh hasn't only done these things but also done even worse than the Amorites, the thousand-year-gone previous inhabitants of the Promised Land, did in their pagan worship, human sacrifice, and utter disregard for life. Jerusalem and Judah will ultimately get wiped out, the same thing Isaiah foretold to Hezekiah after he'd let the envoys from Babylon look through the city. Not something you want to be know for as king, presiding over your country's end.



Actually, Manasseh wasn't the last king of Judah, but his reign may well have been the beginning of the end. In 2 Chronicles 33 we're told Manasseh was taken at one point with nose hooks and chains ("among the thorns, and bound him with fetters" in verse eleven) before the king of Assyria in Babylon, and whatever happened to him there was so humbling that Manasseh repented -- that is, he turned away from what he had been doing -- and when he returned to Jerusalem fortified the cities of Judah as well as tore down the idols. The full story's in verses one through twenty and gives us a clue that even the baddest of the bad weren't all bad. It's easy to view distant ancestors or even those we only know through the media as paragons of virtue or exemplars of vice, when all too often neither is true. It's somewhere in between.



Back in 2 Kings 21, after Manasseh's death and burial in the garden of Uzza, his son Amon came to power in Judah for two years. From the account given here and in 2 Chronicles, Amon wasn't much of an improvement on his father in the God-honoring department. Verses twenty through twenty-two are the standard litany of what he did was evil in the sight of the LORD. But he didn't have anything resembling a conversion experience; in verse twenty-three we're told Amon was killed in the palace by his own servants. Maybe the servants thought the people of Jerusalem and Judah would be grateful, but regicide, the fancy term for killing a monarch, was still something they frowned on because it was taking on God's anointed. Regardless of how far the Israelite and Judean monarchies had degenerated from their original purpose of serving as God's earthly governor over His chosen people, His anointing was nothing to regard lightly. Upon Amon's death and burial with Manasseh in the garden of Uzza, Amon's son Josiah came to power. And so 2 Kings 21 ends with we the readers and the people of Judah on the scene wondering what Josiah will do. What will God do through him?




David