2 Chronicles 33
Bad King Manasseh shapes up
Manasseh, poor excuse of a king
2 Kings 21:1-9, 17-18 1King Hezekiah’s son, Manasseh, was 12 years old when he became king of Judah. He reigned 55 years [1] in Jerusalem. 2Manasseh was a poor excuse of a king, in God’s eyes. Manasseh reverted to some of the old, pagan religions of nations God drove off the land. This king practiced repulsive worship rituals.
3He rebuilt hilltop shrines his dad, Hezekiah, had torn down. He built altars for worshiping the Canaanite god Baal. [2] And he erected a pole [3] used in worshiping the goddess Asherah. Manasseh also worshiped gods of the sky. [4] 44He built pagan altars, too, and put them on Jerusalem’s Temple property. The Temple is a sacred space reserved for the LORD who said, “This is my home, my resting place forever.” [5] 5Some altars were for gods of the sky. He put them in two of the Temple courtyards that are devoted to the LORD alone. Manasseh sacrifices his son
6Manasseh sacrificed his own son and burned the body on an altar. [6] He consulted sorcerers, wizards, fortunetellers, along with mediums who tried to contact the dead. [7] These sins made the LORD angry.
7Manasseh put a carved image of an idol on the Temple property. This is the same Temple that the LORD told David and Solomon would become his home. The LORD said, “Out of all the tribes, I chose this house in Jerusalem as the place where I will live forever among my people—Israel. 8This will be Israel’s home forever, just as I promised your ancestors. All you have to do is honor your part of the agreement and obey the laws and teachings I gave you through Moses.”
9Judah didn’t obey God. Manasseh led the way. Judah under his leadership became viler and more sinful than the nations who had lived there centuries earlier—before the LORD got rid of them to make room for Israel. God forgives Manasseh
10The LORD tried to reach out and connect with the people, but they weren’t interested in God. 11So God sent the Assyrian army to get their attention. Assyrian military commanders arrested Manasseh, [8] tied him up, accessorized him with a humiliating nose ring, and marched him off to the land of Babylon. [9]
12Terrified, Manasseh turned to God. [10] Humbled and horrified, he prayed for the God of his ancestors to help him. 13God heard that prayer and returned him to Jerusalem as king of Judah. That convinced Manasseh the LORD was God. He had no doubt about it. Manasseh reinforces Jerusalem’s walls
14Safe in Jerusalem, he reinforced the city walls. He built a towering outer wall west of Gihon Spring, [11] to protect the City of David. [12] The wall ran from the Kidron Valley up to Fish Gate [13] and enclosed the Ophel [14] hill. Then he stationed companies of soldiers and their commanders in every walled city of Judah.
15He removed an idol he had put inside the Jerusalem Temple. And he got rid of every foreign god he could lay hands on. He tore down the pagan shrines and altars he had built on the Jerusalem Temple hilltop and throughout the city. He pitched them outside the city as trash.
16He repaired the Temple altar and sacrificed a peace offering of gratitude. He made a proclamation that the people of his kingdom should devote themselves to the LORD God of Israel. 17But by then, the people were used to sacrificing at nearby hilltop shrines. So, they kept doing it. But now, they were sacrificing to the LORD their God. Manasseh dies
18The rest of Manasseh’s story, with the sins he committed, and the warnings he got from prophets, are written in the History of Israel’s Kings. [15] So is his prayer for God’s help. 19The Record of the Prophets talks more about his prayer to God and how God responded. It reports on his sins and depravity. It describes where he built the hilltop shrines and set up sacred poles. And it reveals which gods he worshiped.
20Manasseh died and was buried with his ancestors outside his palace. Manasseh’s son Amon became the next king. Judah’s new king, Amon
2 Kings 21:19-26 21Amon was 22 years old when he became king. He held the job for two years. 22Amon did every evil thing his dad had done. He sacrificed to the same idols his father did.
23Though his father eventually grew some humility and turned to God, Amon never did. Amon became a worse human being than his father had ever been. Amon killed in coup
24Some of Amon’s officials assassinated him and many in his family. 25When Judah’s citizens found out about the murders, they executed the killers who led the coup. Judah’s people then crowned Amon’s surviving son, Josiah. 
Footnotes
133:1Such a long reign for such a wretched king may have confused many Jewish people in Bible times. That’s because many seemed to believe that God rewarded the good and punished the bad. See an example in a question Jesus’s disciples ask him, John 9:1-5. See also the notes for 33:12.
233:3Baal and Asherah were native Canaanite gods worshiped by the people who lived in what is now Israel and the Palestinian Territory before Joshua led the Hebrew (Jewish) invasion into the land to take it from the locals. Many of these locals considered Baal a god of fertility in family, flocks, and fields. He sent the storms and the rain. Some scholars say the idea behind one worship ritual was to entertain Baal by letting him watch people have sex. They did this so he would make it rain. Priests apparently served as sacred prostitutes assigned to helping worshipers please their god. Asherah was a Canaanite fertility goddess of motherhood. She was the love interest of Baal.
333:3Asherah poles may have been trees or poles meant to represent trees, as symbols of a Canaanite fertility goddess known as Asherah.
433:3“You lift your idols in a procession, Sky gods Sikkuth and Kiyyun” (Amos 5:26).
533:4Psalm 132:13-14; 2 Chronicles 7:16.
633:6The phrase is literally “pass through fire.” This sounds like human sacrifice, which Jewish law forbids (Deuteronomy 18:10; Leviticus 18:21). But some Jews did it anyhow (2 Kings 23:10; Jeremiah 7:31). They did it in the Valley of Hinnom on the southwest side of Jerusalem; it was Gehenna in Greek, the international language in Jesus’ day. At some time, the people used that valley as a city dump, with a fire said to constantly smolder. The name of Gehenna became a metaphor describing God’s judgment. That’s because after the Jews started worshiping idols and sacrificing their own children in the valley, the Bible says God sent invaders from the Babylonian Empire, which came after the Assyrians. Babylonians temporarily wiped the Jewish nation off the political map, destroying Jerusalem and leveling the Temple.
733:6Bible writers said God didn’t want his people consulting the dead or fortunetellers. He wanted them to consult him (Leviticus 19:31).
833:11The writer of Chronicles reports that Manasseh was taken captive by the Assyrians and sent off to Babylon territory for a time, where he repented. But the only Assyrian records that mention him portray him as a loyal vassal of the Assyrian empire. He supplied material for a building project in Nineveh, as vassal kingdoms were required to do. And he joined Assyria in a military action against Egypt. There’s a theory that says the Chronicles writer wrote about the repentance of Manasseh as a piece of fiction to help justify his 55-year reign. A reign that long is one that many theologians of Bible times would have said was God’s reward for good behavior. But as all the other reports in the Bible suggest, Manasseh was anything but one of God’s favorites. On the other hand, perhaps the reported arrest of Manasseh simply hasn’t shown up yet in Assyrian documents. And he may well have been arrested because he made the mistake of aligning himself with Assyria’s opposition in one of the many revolts that took place in the region during Manasseh’s long reign. For some scholars today, the fiction or the reality of Manasseh’s repentance remains an intriguing mystery, with plenty of evidence on both sides.
933:11This may not refer to the Babylonian Empire in what is now southern Iraq. Assyrian’s living in Iraq’s northland, were rivals of Babylonians. Here, Babylon may refer to the broader region, which is where Judah was deported a couple generations later (586 BC) by the Babylonian Empire, which had defeated the Assyrians.
1033:12Did Manasseh repent, as reported here in Chronicles. Or was he bad to the bone and evil to the grave as suggested in 2 Kings 21:11, 16-17; Jeremiah 15:4; and 2 Chronicles 33: 22? He didn’t make it to the royal cemetery. He was buried outside his house. This is the headline of Manasseh’s story in the Bible—the key question that biblical scholars grapple with. Did he really repent as Chronicles says?
1133:14Gihon Spring was Jerusalem’s source of water. It was once hidden in a small cave at the base of the ridge on which Jerusalem was built, outside the city walls. Jerusalem couldn’t survive a long siege without water. So, Manasseh’s father, King Hezekiah, ordered a tunnel chiseled through solid rock, connecting the spring to the pool inside the city.
1233:14The City of David was the original part of Jerusalem, which David captured centuries earlier. Solomon extended the city north, adding the palace complex and the Temple.
1333:14Scholars are left guessing about the location of the Fish Gate and most others in Jerusalem as well. Names and locations of gates may have changed throughout the centuries, much like the names and paths of some roads today.
1433:14Jerusalem sits on top of a ridge of hills across the Kidron Valley from the Mount of Olives, which is also a ridge of hills. On Jerusalem’s ridge, Ophel was the hill where some people lived inside the walled city. Ophel was on the south side of Mount Moriah, the hill where the Temple stood.
1533:15This and the other books mentioned
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Map of Jerusalem and City of David
Photo of Gehenna ValleyVideos
3He rebuilt hilltop shrines his dad, Hezekiah, had torn down. He built altars for worshiping the Canaanite god Baal. [2] And he erected a pole [3] used in worshiping the goddess Asherah. Manasseh also worshiped gods of the sky. [4] 44He built pagan altars, too, and put them on Jerusalem’s Temple property. The Temple is a sacred space reserved for the LORD who said, “This is my home, my resting place forever.” [5] 5Some altars were for gods of the sky. He put them in two of the Temple courtyards that are devoted to the LORD alone.
Manasseh sacrifices his son
6Manasseh sacrificed his own son and burned the body on an altar. [6] He consulted sorcerers, wizards, fortunetellers, along with mediums who tried to contact the dead. [7] These sins made the LORD angry.7Manasseh put a carved image of an idol on the Temple property. This is the same Temple that the LORD told David and Solomon would become his home. The LORD said, “Out of all the tribes, I chose this house in Jerusalem as the place where I will live forever among my people—Israel. 8This will be Israel’s home forever, just as I promised your ancestors. All you have to do is honor your part of the agreement and obey the laws and teachings I gave you through Moses.”
9Judah didn’t obey God. Manasseh led the way. Judah under his leadership became viler and more sinful than the nations who had lived there centuries earlier—before the LORD got rid of them to make room for Israel.
God forgives Manasseh
10The LORD tried to reach out and connect with the people, but they weren’t interested in God. 11So God sent the Assyrian army to get their attention. Assyrian military commanders arrested Manasseh, [8] tied him up, accessorized him with a humiliating nose ring, and marched him off to the land of Babylon. [9]12Terrified, Manasseh turned to God. [10] Humbled and horrified, he prayed for the God of his ancestors to help him. 13God heard that prayer and returned him to Jerusalem as king of Judah. That convinced Manasseh the LORD was God. He had no doubt about it.
Manasseh reinforces Jerusalem’s walls
14Safe in Jerusalem, he reinforced the city walls. He built a towering outer wall west of Gihon Spring, [11] to protect the City of David. [12] The wall ran from the Kidron Valley up to Fish Gate [13] and enclosed the Ophel [14] hill. Then he stationed companies of soldiers and their commanders in every walled city of Judah.15He removed an idol he had put inside the Jerusalem Temple. And he got rid of every foreign god he could lay hands on. He tore down the pagan shrines and altars he had built on the Jerusalem Temple hilltop and throughout the city. He pitched them outside the city as trash.
16He repaired the Temple altar and sacrificed a peace offering of gratitude. He made a proclamation that the people of his kingdom should devote themselves to the LORD God of Israel. 17But by then, the people were used to sacrificing at nearby hilltop shrines. So, they kept doing it. But now, they were sacrificing to the LORD their God.
Manasseh dies
18The rest of Manasseh’s story, with the sins he committed, and the warnings he got from prophets, are written in the History of Israel’s Kings. [15] So is his prayer for God’s help. 19The Record of the Prophets talks more about his prayer to God and how God responded. It reports on his sins and depravity. It describes where he built the hilltop shrines and set up sacred poles. And it reveals which gods he worshiped.20Manasseh died and was buried with his ancestors outside his palace. Manasseh’s son Amon became the next king.
Judah’s new king, Amon
2 Kings 21:19-26 21Amon was 22 years old when he became king. He held the job for two years. 22Amon did every evil thing his dad had done. He sacrificed to the same idols his father did.
23Though his father eventually grew some humility and turned to God, Amon never did. Amon became a worse human being than his father had ever been. Amon killed in coup
24Some of Amon’s officials assassinated him and many in his family. 25When Judah’s citizens found out about the murders, they executed the killers who led the coup. Judah’s people then crowned Amon’s surviving son, Josiah. Footnotes
133:1Such a long reign for such a wretched king may have confused many Jewish people in Bible times. That’s because many seemed to believe that God rewarded the good and punished the bad. See an example in a question Jesus’s disciples ask him, John 9:1-5. See also the notes for 33:12.
233:3Baal and Asherah were native Canaanite gods worshiped by the people who lived in what is now Israel and the Palestinian Territory before Joshua led the Hebrew (Jewish) invasion into the land to take it from the locals. Many of these locals considered Baal a god of fertility in family, flocks, and fields. He sent the storms and the rain. Some scholars say the idea behind one worship ritual was to entertain Baal by letting him watch people have sex. They did this so he would make it rain. Priests apparently served as sacred prostitutes assigned to helping worshipers please their god. Asherah was a Canaanite fertility goddess of motherhood. She was the love interest of Baal.
333:3Asherah poles may have been trees or poles meant to represent trees, as symbols of a Canaanite fertility goddess known as Asherah.
433:3“You lift your idols in a procession, Sky gods Sikkuth and Kiyyun” (Amos 5:26).
533:4Psalm 132:13-14; 2 Chronicles 7:16.
633:6The phrase is literally “pass through fire.” This sounds like human sacrifice, which Jewish law forbids (Deuteronomy 18:10; Leviticus 18:21). But some Jews did it anyhow (2 Kings 23:10; Jeremiah 7:31). They did it in the Valley of Hinnom on the southwest side of Jerusalem; it was Gehenna in Greek, the international language in Jesus’ day. At some time, the people used that valley as a city dump, with a fire said to constantly smolder. The name of Gehenna became a metaphor describing God’s judgment. That’s because after the Jews started worshiping idols and sacrificing their own children in the valley, the Bible says God sent invaders from the Babylonian Empire, which came after the Assyrians. Babylonians temporarily wiped the Jewish nation off the political map, destroying Jerusalem and leveling the Temple.
733:6Bible writers said God didn’t want his people consulting the dead or fortunetellers. He wanted them to consult him (Leviticus 19:31).
833:11The writer of Chronicles reports that Manasseh was taken captive by the Assyrians and sent off to Babylon territory for a time, where he repented. But the only Assyrian records that mention him portray him as a loyal vassal of the Assyrian empire. He supplied material for a building project in Nineveh, as vassal kingdoms were required to do. And he joined Assyria in a military action against Egypt. There’s a theory that says the Chronicles writer wrote about the repentance of Manasseh as a piece of fiction to help justify his 55-year reign. A reign that long is one that many theologians of Bible times would have said was God’s reward for good behavior. But as all the other reports in the Bible suggest, Manasseh was anything but one of God’s favorites. On the other hand, perhaps the reported arrest of Manasseh simply hasn’t shown up yet in Assyrian documents. And he may well have been arrested because he made the mistake of aligning himself with Assyria’s opposition in one of the many revolts that took place in the region during Manasseh’s long reign. For some scholars today, the fiction or the reality of Manasseh’s repentance remains an intriguing mystery, with plenty of evidence on both sides.
933:11This may not refer to the Babylonian Empire in what is now southern Iraq. Assyrian’s living in Iraq’s northland, were rivals of Babylonians. Here, Babylon may refer to the broader region, which is where Judah was deported a couple generations later (586 BC) by the Babylonian Empire, which had defeated the Assyrians.
1033:12Did Manasseh repent, as reported here in Chronicles. Or was he bad to the bone and evil to the grave as suggested in 2 Kings 21:11, 16-17; Jeremiah 15:4; and 2 Chronicles 33: 22? He didn’t make it to the royal cemetery. He was buried outside his house. This is the headline of Manasseh’s story in the Bible—the key question that biblical scholars grapple with. Did he really repent as Chronicles says?
1133:14Gihon Spring was Jerusalem’s source of water. It was once hidden in a small cave at the base of the ridge on which Jerusalem was built, outside the city walls. Jerusalem couldn’t survive a long siege without water. So, Manasseh’s father, King Hezekiah, ordered a tunnel chiseled through solid rock, connecting the spring to the pool inside the city.
1233:14The City of David was the original part of Jerusalem, which David captured centuries earlier. Solomon extended the city north, adding the palace complex and the Temple.
1333:14Scholars are left guessing about the location of the Fish Gate and most others in Jerusalem as well. Names and locations of gates may have changed throughout the centuries, much like the names and paths of some roads today.
1433:14Jerusalem sits on top of a ridge of hills across the Kidron Valley from the Mount of Olives, which is also a ridge of hills. On Jerusalem’s ridge, Ophel was the hill where some people lived inside the walled city. Ophel was on the south side of Mount Moriah, the hill where the Temple stood.
1533:15This and the other books mentioned
Discussion Questions
- Sorry, there are currently no questions for this chapter.
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Jerusalem with Hinnom, Kidron ValleysMap of Jerusalem and City of DavidPhoto of Gehenna ValleyVideos
23Though his father eventually grew some humility and turned to God, Amon never did. Amon became a worse human being than his father had ever been.
Amon killed in coup
24Some of Amon’s officials assassinated him and many in his family. 25When Judah’s citizens found out about the murders, they executed the killers who led the coup. Judah’s people then crowned Amon’s surviving son, Josiah.Footnotes
Such a long reign for such a wretched king may have confused many Jewish people in Bible times. That’s because many seemed to believe that God rewarded the good and punished the bad. See an example in a question Jesus’s disciples ask him, John 9:1-5. See also the notes for 33:12.
Baal and Asherah were native Canaanite gods worshiped by the people who lived in what is now Israel and the Palestinian Territory before Joshua led the Hebrew (Jewish) invasion into the land to take it from the locals. Many of these locals considered Baal a god of fertility in family, flocks, and fields. He sent the storms and the rain. Some scholars say the idea behind one worship ritual was to entertain Baal by letting him watch people have sex. They did this so he would make it rain. Priests apparently served as sacred prostitutes assigned to helping worshipers please their god. Asherah was a Canaanite fertility goddess of motherhood. She was the love interest of Baal.
Asherah poles may have been trees or poles meant to represent trees, as symbols of a Canaanite fertility goddess known as Asherah.
“You lift your idols in a procession, Sky gods Sikkuth and Kiyyun” (Amos 5:26).
Psalm 132:13-14; 2 Chronicles 7:16.
The phrase is literally “pass through fire.” This sounds like human sacrifice, which Jewish law forbids (Deuteronomy 18:10; Leviticus 18:21). But some Jews did it anyhow (2 Kings 23:10; Jeremiah 7:31). They did it in the Valley of Hinnom on the southwest side of Jerusalem; it was Gehenna in Greek, the international language in Jesus’ day. At some time, the people used that valley as a city dump, with a fire said to constantly smolder. The name of Gehenna became a metaphor describing God’s judgment. That’s because after the Jews started worshiping idols and sacrificing their own children in the valley, the Bible says God sent invaders from the Babylonian Empire, which came after the Assyrians. Babylonians temporarily wiped the Jewish nation off the political map, destroying Jerusalem and leveling the Temple.
Bible writers said God didn’t want his people consulting the dead or fortunetellers. He wanted them to consult him (Leviticus 19:31).
The writer of Chronicles reports that Manasseh was taken captive by the Assyrians and sent off to Babylon territory for a time, where he repented. But the only Assyrian records that mention him portray him as a loyal vassal of the Assyrian empire. He supplied material for a building project in Nineveh, as vassal kingdoms were required to do. And he joined Assyria in a military action against Egypt. There’s a theory that says the Chronicles writer wrote about the repentance of Manasseh as a piece of fiction to help justify his 55-year reign. A reign that long is one that many theologians of Bible times would have said was God’s reward for good behavior. But as all the other reports in the Bible suggest, Manasseh was anything but one of God’s favorites. On the other hand, perhaps the reported arrest of Manasseh simply hasn’t shown up yet in Assyrian documents. And he may well have been arrested because he made the mistake of aligning himself with Assyria’s opposition in one of the many revolts that took place in the region during Manasseh’s long reign. For some scholars today, the fiction or the reality of Manasseh’s repentance remains an intriguing mystery, with plenty of evidence on both sides.
This may not refer to the Babylonian Empire in what is now southern Iraq. Assyrian’s living in Iraq’s northland, were rivals of Babylonians. Here, Babylon may refer to the broader region, which is where Judah was deported a couple generations later (586 BC) by the Babylonian Empire, which had defeated the Assyrians.
Did Manasseh repent, as reported here in Chronicles. Or was he bad to the bone and evil to the grave as suggested in 2 Kings 21:11, 16-17; Jeremiah 15:4; and 2 Chronicles 33: 22? He didn’t make it to the royal cemetery. He was buried outside his house. This is the headline of Manasseh’s story in the Bible—the key question that biblical scholars grapple with. Did he really repent as Chronicles says?
Gihon Spring was Jerusalem’s source of water. It was once hidden in a small cave at the base of the ridge on which Jerusalem was built, outside the city walls. Jerusalem couldn’t survive a long siege without water. So, Manasseh’s father, King Hezekiah, ordered a tunnel chiseled through solid rock, connecting the spring to the pool inside the city.
The City of David was the original part of Jerusalem, which David captured centuries earlier. Solomon extended the city north, adding the palace complex and the Temple.
Scholars are left guessing about the location of the Fish Gate and most others in Jerusalem as well. Names and locations of gates may have changed throughout the centuries, much like the names and paths of some roads today.
Jerusalem sits on top of a ridge of hills across the Kidron Valley from the Mount of Olives, which is also a ridge of hills. On Jerusalem’s ridge, Ophel was the hill where some people lived inside the walled city. Ophel was on the south side of Mount Moriah, the hill where the Temple stood.
This and the other books mentioned
Discussion Questions
- Sorry, there are currently no questions for this chapter.
Maps/Guides
Videos
