Faithfullee

Manasseh: The Most Wicked King and the Most Surprising Repentance

Manasseh's crimes are catalogued with unusual thoroughness. He rebuilds the high places Hezekiah demolished. He erects altars for the Baals and makes Asheroth. He worships the host of heaven and serves them. He builds altars in the courts of the temple — for the host of heaven, in the very house of which the LORD had said, "In Jerusalem shall my name be forever" (2 Chronicles 33:4). He burns his sons as offerings in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom. He practices fortune-telling, omens, sorcery, and deals with mediums and necromancers.

"Manasseh led Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem astray, to do more evil than the nations whom the LORD destroyed before the people of Israel." — 2 Chronicles 33:9 (ESV)

The LORD speaks to Manasseh and to his people. They do not listen. The king of Assyria takes Manasseh captive with hooks, binds him with bronze shackles, and brings him to Babylon.

What happens next appears only in Chronicles — it is absent from 2 Kings' account of Manasseh entirely. This is one of the most remarkable editorial decisions in the entire Old Testament: 2 Kings tells you only about the sin; 2 Chronicles tells you what happened afterward.

"And when he was in distress, he entreated the favor of the LORD his God and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers. He prayed to him, and God was moved by his entreaty and heard his plea and brought him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the LORD was God." — 2 Chronicles 33:12–13 (ESV)

H.G.M. Williamson, in his 1 and 2 Chronicles commentary (NCBC, 1982), notes that the Manasseh repentance is the Chronicler's most extreme test case for the principle of 2 Chronicles 7:14. If a king who committed every form of apostasy available — altars in the temple, child sacrifice, sorcery, idol worship — can humble himself before the LORD and be heard, then the promise is universal in its scope. No sin places a person beyond the reach of the turning that 7:14 describes.

We find Manasseh's story one of the most important in the entire book, precisely because it gets so little attention. Here is the most wicked king in Judah's history, in chains in Babylon, and he prays — and God is moved. Not grudgingly. The text says God was moved by his entreaty. There is no hint of a minimum requirement of worthiness. The only qualification is the humbling. We keep returning to that.

After his restoration, Manasseh removes the foreign gods, the idol he had set up in the temple, all the altars he had built. He restores the altar of the LORD and offers peace offerings and thank offerings, and commands Judah to serve the LORD the God of Israel. The people still sacrifice at the high places — but to the LORD their God only (2 Chronicles 33:17). The reform is incomplete. But the man who had done more evil than the nations has become a man who commands Israel to serve the LORD.

Josiah and the Book of the Law

Josiah begins to seek the God of his father David in the eighth year of his reign — while still a youth. In the twelfth year he begins to purge Judah and Jerusalem of the high places, Asheroth, carved images, and metal images. In the eighteenth year he sends Shaphan the secretary to the house of the LORD to begin repair work.

In the process of repair, Hilkiah the high priest finds the Book of the Law — almost certainly Deuteronomy, or a significant portion of it — in the house of the LORD. Shaphan reads it to the king. Josiah tears his clothes:

"Great is the wrath of the LORD that is poured out on us, because our fathers have not kept the word of the LORD, to do according to all that is written in this book." — 2 Chronicles 34:21 (ESV)

He sends a delegation to inquire of the LORD through the prophetess Huldah. Her word is sobering: the covenant curses written in the book will come upon this place and its inhabitants, because they have forsaken the LORD. But to Josiah specifically: because your heart was tender and you humbled yourself before God when you heard his words, you will be gathered to your fathers in peace and your eyes will not see all the disaster he will bring upon this place.

Raymond Dillard, in his 2 Chronicles commentary (WBC, 1987), observes that Huldah's oracle establishes a crucial distinction: Josiah's personal faithfulness will be honored — he will die before the disaster — but the corporate covenant consequences are already determined. The individual's humility can earn him personal peace; it cannot reverse what decades of apostasy have set in motion for the nation. Josiah's reform is genuine, sweeping, and costly — and it is not enough to prevent what is coming. We find that distinction important and honest. Personal faithfulness matters. It changes what happens to the individual. It does not automatically undo the cumulative consequences of a community's long turning away.

The Passover of Josiah

Josiah gathers all Israel and Judah to Jerusalem and reads to them all the words of the book of the covenant. He makes a covenant to walk after the LORD, to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with all his heart and all his soul. All who are present in Jerusalem stand with him (2 Chronicles 34:31–32).

The Passover that follows (2 Chronicles 35) is described in extraordinary logistical detail, with the Levites' role particularly emphasized. Josiah contributes 30,000 lambs and young goats and 3,000 bulls from his own possessions — a voluntary royal gift. The leaders of the Levites contribute similarly. The Levites instruct the people on how to carry out the Passover correctly; they slaughter and prepare the Passover lamb for everyone who is unclean, standing in the gap between the holy requirements and the people who cannot yet meet them. The singers lead the worship. And then the assessment:

"No Passover like it had been kept in Israel since the days of Samuel the prophet. None of the kings of Israel had kept such a Passover as was kept by Josiah." — 2 Chronicles 35:18 (ESV)

Sara Japhet, in her I and II Chronicles commentary (OTL, 1993), notes that the comparison to Samuel is historically specific and theologically loaded: Samuel represents the last great covenant faithful period before the monarchy's failures — before Saul's unfaithfulness, before the long complexity of kingship. Josiah's Passover represents a recovery of that pre-monarchical covenant purity within a monarchical context. It is the highest point of covenant observance the monarchy achieves.

Josiah's Death at Megiddo

Josiah's death is as sudden and unexpected as his reign was faithful. Necho king of Egypt marches to fight at Carchemish on the Euphrates, and sends word to Josiah that his quarrel is not with Judah, and that God has commanded him to hurry. Josiah does not listen — "He did not listen to the words of Necho from the mouth of God" (2 Chronicles 35:22) — disguises himself and is shot by archers. He dies at Jerusalem and is buried with great lamentation. "All Judah and Jerusalem mourned for Josiah" (2 Chronicles 35:24).

The tragedy is in the phrase from the mouth of God. Necho's word — however strange its channel — was a divine warning Josiah failed to heed. The king who was praised for his responsive heart to the word of God dies failing to recognize when that word came through an unexpected source. Andrew Hill, in his 1 & 2 Chronicles commentary (NIVAC, 2003), observes that Josiah's death functions as a final reminder that even the Chronicler's greatest reform king is not exempt from the pattern the book has been demonstrating throughout: faithfulness has to be maintained; it cannot be assumed, even by the most covenant-committed king.

We sit with this for a while. Josiah — the one who wept at the Book of the Law, who kept the greatest Passover since Samuel, whose heart was the most tender and responsive the Chronicler describes — misses a warning because it came through the mouth of an Egyptian king. God's word can come from sources we don't expect, and our assumptions about who speaks for God can shut out the very thing we most need to hear.

Last updated: March 3, 2026.