The Living Bible (148 page)
Authors: Inc. Tyndale House Publishers
Tags: #BIBLES / Other Translations / Text
Manasseh was only twelve years old when he became king, and he reigned fifty-five years in Jerusalem.
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But it was an evil reign, for he encouraged his people to worship the idols of the heathen nations destroyed by the Lord when the people of Israel entered the land.
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He rebuilt the heathen altars his father Hezekiah had destroyed—the altars of Baal, and of the shameful images, and of the sun, moon, and stars.
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He even constructed heathen altars in both courts of the Temple of the Lord for worshiping the sun, moon, and stars—in the very place where the Lord had said that he would be honored forever.
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And Manasseh sacrificed his own children as burnt offerings in the valley of Hinnom. He consulted spirit-mediums, too, and fortune-tellers and sorcerers, and encouraged every sort of evil, making the Lord very angry.
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Think of it! He placed an idol in the very Temple of God, where God had told David and his son Solomon, “I will be honored here in this Temple and in Jerusalem—the city I have chosen to be honored forever above all the other cities of Israel.
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And if you will only obey my commands—all the laws and instructions given to you by Moses—I won’t ever again exile Israel from this land which I gave your ancestors.”
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But Manasseh encouraged the people of Judah and Jerusalem to do even more evil than the nations the Lord destroyed when Israel entered the land.
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Warnings from the Lord were ignored by both Manasseh and his people.
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So God sent the Assyrian armies, and they seized him with hooks and bound him with bronze chains and carted him away to Babylon.
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Then at last he came to his senses and cried out humbly to God for help.
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And the Lord listened and answered his plea by returning him to Jerusalem and to his kingdom! At that point Manasseh finally realized that the Lord was really God!
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It was after this that he rebuilt the outer wall of the City of David and the wall from west of the spring of Gihon in the Kidron Valley, and then to the Fish Gate, and around Citadel Hill, where it was built very high. And he stationed his army generals in all of the fortified cities of Judah.
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He also removed the foreign gods from the hills and took his idol from the Temple, and tore down the altars he had built on the mountain, where the Temple stood, and the altars that were in Jerusalem, and dumped them outside the city.
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Then he rebuilt the altar of the Lord and offered sacrifices upon it—peace offerings and thanksgiving offerings—and demanded that the people of Judah worship the Lord God of Israel.
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However, the people still sacrificed upon the altars on the hills, but only to the Lord their God.
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The rest of Manasseh’s deeds, and his prayer to God, and God’s reply through the prophets—this is all written in
The Annals of the Kings of Israel.
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His prayer, and the way God answered, and a frank account of his sins and errors, including a list of the locations where he built idols on the hills and set up shameful and graven images (this of course was before the great change in his attitude), are recorded in
The Annals of the Prophets.
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When Manasseh died, he was buried beneath his own palace, and his son Amon became the new king. Amon was twenty-two years old when he began to reign in Jerusalem, but he lasted for only two years.
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It was an evil reign like the early years of his father Manasseh; for Amon sacrificed to all the idols just as his father had.
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But he didn’t change as his father did; instead he sinned more and more.
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At last his own officers assassinated him in his palace.
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But some public-spirited citizens killed all of those who assassinated him and declared his son Josiah to be the new king.
Josiah was only eight years old when he became king. He reigned thirty-one years in Jerusalem.
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His was a good reign, as he carefully followed the good example of his ancestor King David.
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For when he was sixteen years old, in the eighth year of his reign, he began to search for the God of his ancestor David; and four years later he began to clean up Judah and Jerusalem, destroying the heathen altars and the shameful idols on the hills.
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He went out personally to watch as the altars of Baal were knocked apart, the obelisks above the altars chopped down, and the shameful idols ground into dust and scattered over the graves of those who had sacrificed to them.
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Then he burned the bones of the heathen priests upon their own altars, feeling that this action would clear the people of Judah and Jerusalem from the guilt of their sin of idol worship.
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Then he went to the cities of Manasseh, Ephraim, and Simeon, even to distant Naphtali, and did the same thing there.
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He broke down the heathen altars, ground to powder the shameful idols, and chopped down the obelisks. He did this everywhere throughout the whole land of Israel before returning to Jerusalem.
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During the eighteenth year of his reign, after he had purged the land and cleaned up the situation at the Temple, he appointed Shaphan (son of Azaliah) and Maaseiah, governor of Jerusalem, and Joah (son of Joahaz), the city treasurer, to repair the Temple.
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They set up a collection system for gifts for the Temple. The money was collected at the Temple gates by the Levites on guard duty there. Gifts were brought by the people coming from Manasseh, Ephraim, and other parts of the remnant of Israel, as well as from the people of Jerusalem. The money was taken to Hilkiah the High Priest for accounting,
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and then used by the Levites to pay the carpenters and stonemasons and to purchase building materials—stone building blocks, timber, lumber, and beams. He now rebuilt what earlier kings of Judah had torn down.
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The workmen were energetic under the leadership of Jahath and Obadiah, Levites of the subclan of Merari. Zechariah and Meshullam, of the subclan of Kohath, were the building superintendents. The Levites who were skilled musicians played background music while the work progressed.
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Other Levites superintended the unskilled laborers who carried in the materials to the workmen. Still others assisted as accountants, supervisors, and carriers.
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One day when Hilkiah the High Priest was at the Temple recording the money collected at the gates, he found an old scroll that turned out to be the laws of God as given to Moses!
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“Look!” Hilkiah exclaimed to Shaphan, the king’s secretary. “See what I have found in the Temple! These are the laws of God!” Hilkiah gave the scroll to Shaphan, and Shaphan took it to the king, along with his report that there was good progress being made in the reconstruction of the Temple.
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“The money chests have been opened and counted, and the money has been put into the hand of the overseers and workmen,” he said to the king.
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Then he mentioned the scroll and how Hilkiah had discovered it. So he read it to the king.
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When the king heard what these laws required of God’s people, he ripped his clothing in despair
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and summoned Hilkiah, Ahikam (son of Shaphan), Abdon (son of Micah), Shaphan the treasurer, and Asaiah, the king’s personal aide.
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“Go to the Temple and plead with the Lord for me!” the king told them. “Pray for all the remnant of Israel and Judah! For this scroll says that the reason the Lord’s great anger has been poured out upon us is that our ancestors have not obeyed these laws that are written here.”
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So the men went to Huldah the prophetess, the wife of Shallum (son of Tokhath, son of Hasrah). (Shallum was the king’s tailor, living in the second ward.) When they told her of the king’s trouble,
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she replied, “The Lord God of Israel says, Tell the man who sent you,
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“‘Yes, the Lord will destroy this city and its people. All the curses written in the scroll will come true.
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For my people have forsaken me and have worshiped heathen gods, and I am very angry with them for their deeds. Therefore, my unquenchable wrath is poured out upon this place.’
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“But the Lord also says this to the king of Judah who sent you to ask me about this: Tell him, the Lord God of Israel says,
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‘Because you are sorry and have humbled yourself before God when you heard my words against this city and its people, and have ripped your clothing in despair and wept before me—I have heard you, says the Lord,
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and I will not send the promised evil upon this city and its people until after your death.’” So they brought back to the king this word from the Lord.
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Then the king summoned all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem,
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and the priests and Levites and all the people great and small, to accompany him to the Temple. There the king read the scroll to them—the covenant of God that was found in the Temple.
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As the king stood before them, he made a pledge to the Lord to follow his commandments with all his heart and soul and to do what was written in the scroll.
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And he required everyone in Jerusalem and Benjamin to subscribe to this pact with God, and all of them did.
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So Josiah removed all idols from the areas occupied by the Jews and required all of them to worship Jehovah their God. And throughout the remainder of his lifetime they continued serving Jehovah, the God of their ancestors.