Second Book of Chronicles 33

¹ Manasseh was twelve years old when he came to the throne and he reigned for fifty-five years in Jerusalem.

² He did what is displeasing to Yahweh, copying the shameful practices of the nations whom Yahweh had dispossessed for the sons of Israel.

³ He rebuilt the high places that his father Hezekiah had demolished, he set up altars to the Baals and made sacred poles, he worshipped the whole array of heaven and served it.

⁴ He built altars in the Temple of Yahweh, the Temple of which Yahweh had said, ‘In Jerusalem my name shall be for ever.

⁵ He built altars to the whole array of heaven in the two courts of the Temple of Yahweh.

⁶ He caused his sons to pass through the fire in the Valley of Ben-hinnom. He practised soothsaying, magic and witchcraft, and introduced necromancers and wizards. He did very many more things displeasing to Yahweh, thus provoking his anger.

⁷ He placed the image of the idol he had made in the Temple of which God had said to David and to his son Solomon, ‘In this Temple and in Jerusalem, the city I chose out of all the tribes of Israel, I will give my name a home for ever.

⁸ I will no longer turn Israel’s footsteps away from the land I assigned to their fathers, provided they observe all I have ordered them in accordance with the whole Law, the statutes and the ordinances, given through Moses.’

⁹ Manasseh led Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem astray, so that they did more evil than those nations Yahweh had destroyed before the sons of Israel.

¹⁰ Yahweh spoke to Manasseh and his people, but they paid no attention.

¹¹ Then Yahweh sent the generals of the king of Assyria against them, who captured Manasseh with hooks, put him in chains and led him away to Babylon.[*b]

¹² In his distress he sought to appease Yahweh his God, humbling himself deeply before the God of his ancestors;

¹³ he prayed to him, and God relented at his prayer, hearing his plea and bringing him back to Jerusalem and his kingdom. Manasseh realised then that Yahweh is God.

¹⁴ After this he rebuilt the outer wall of the Citadel of David, west of Gihon in the wadi, as far as the Fish Gate; it encircled the Ophel, and he increased its height very considerably. He stationed military governors in all the fortified towns of Judah.

¹⁵ Next he removed the alien gods and the idol from the Temple of Yahweh, and all the altars he had built on the mountain of the Temple of Yahweh and in Jerusalem, and threw them out of the city.

¹⁶ He rebuilt the altar of Yahweh and offered sacrifices of communion and of praise on it, and ordered Judah to offer worship to Yahweh the God of Israel;

¹⁷ however, the people continued to sacrifice on the high places, although only to Yahweh their God.

¹⁸ The rest of the history of Manasseh, his prayer to his God,[*c] and the words of the seers who spoke to him in the name of Yahweh the God of Israel, can be found in the Annals of the Kings of Israel.

¹⁹ His prayer and how God relented at his prayer, all his sins, his unfaithfulness, the sites where he built high places and set up sacred poles and idols before he humbled himself, are recorded in the Annals of Hozai.

²⁰ Then Manasseh slept with his ancestors, and they buried him in his palace. His son Amon succeeded him.

²¹ Amon was twenty-two years old when he came to the throne and he reigned for two years in Jerusalem.

²² He did what is displeasing to Yahweh, as Manasseh his father had done. Amon offered sacrifice and worship to all the idols Manasseh his father had made.

²³ He did not humble himself before Yahweh like Manasseh his father; it was this very Amon who made the guilt of Judah so grave.

²⁴ His officers plotted against him and killed him in his palace.

²⁵ But the country people struck down all those who had plotted against King Amon and proclaimed his son Josiah as his successor.