Manasseh: The King Who Undid Everything
Manasseh was twelve years old when he began to reign, and he reigned fifty-five years in Jerusalem — the longest reign in Judah's history, and by the narrator's account, the worst. He rebuilt the high places his father Hezekiah had destroyed. He erected altars for Baal and made an Asherah as Ahab king of Israel had done. He worshiped all the host of heaven and served them. He built altars in the two courts of the house of the LORD, burning his son as an offering in the Valley of Hinnom, using fortune-telling and omens, dealing with mediums and necromancers. He put a carved image of Asherah in the house that the LORD had said "In this house, and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, I will put my name forever." The Asherah image — the symbol of the Canaanite fertility goddess — was installed in the place that had been consecrated by the glory of God at the temple's dedication.
The narrator frames the comparison explicitly: Manasseh made Judah sin so that they did more evil than the nations had done whom the LORD destroyed before the people of Israel. The comparison to the pre-Israelite Canaanite nations is the most damning possible: the people who had been given the land because the previous inhabitants had corrupted themselves had now out-corrupted them. The land itself was being defiled again.
The LORD spoke through his servants the prophets: "Because Manasseh king of Judah has committed these abominations and has done things more evil than all that the Amorites did, who were before him, and has made Judah also to sin with his idols, therefore thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: Behold, I am bringing upon Jerusalem and Judah such disaster that the ears of everyone who hears of it will tingle." He would wipe Jerusalem as one wipes a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down. He would forsake the remnant of his heritage and give them into the hand of their enemies.
What Manasseh also shed was innocent blood, very much, until he had filled Jerusalem from one end to the other. The phrase "innocent blood" (dam naqi) is the language of judicial murder — the deliberate killing of the righteous by those with power. The scale is expressed by the physical image: the city full, end to end, with innocent blood.
Manasseh died and was buried in the garden of his house. Amon his son reigned two years. He walked in all the way that his father had walked and served the idols. But he did not humble himself before the LORD as Manasseh had humbled himself — here the narrator gestures toward what 2 Chronicles 33 records in more detail: Manasseh's deportation to Assyria and his repentance there. Amon learned the apostasy without learning the repentance. His servants conspired against him and killed him in his house. The people of the land killed all who had conspired against King Amon and made Josiah his son king in his place.
We find it significant that even Manasseh eventually repented — 2 Chronicles tells that story. But here in Kings the focus is on the damage. Fifty-five years. A generation and a half of the covenant community shaped in the image of Baal worship, child sacrifice, and filled with innocent blood. Even genuine repentance cannot undo what fifty-five years of systemic corruption does to a people. The judgment announced here is not about Manasseh personally. It is about what was done to Judah. Individual repentance could still secure individual mercy. National disaster was no longer preventable.
The Book of the Law Found
Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign. He reigned thirty-one years and did what was right in the eyes of the LORD, walking in all the way of David his father. In the eighteenth year of his reign — when he was twenty-six — he sent Shaphan the secretary to the house of the LORD to begin a program of building repair. During the repair work, Hilkiah the high priest reported to Shaphan the secretary: "I have found the Book of the Law in the house of the LORD." He gave him the book and Shaphan read it and brought it to the king.
Let that register. The Book of the Law — some form of Deuteronomy, or a significant portion of it — had been lost. Not destroyed, apparently, but stored in the temple during the apostasy of Manasseh's reign, perhaps by priests who hoped it would be needed again. The covenant document with its blessings, curses, and commands had apparently been unavailable to the people of Judah for decades. A work crew found it during routine repairs.
When the king heard the words of the book, he tore his clothes. The gesture was not ceremonial; it was the physical expression of a man who understood what he had heard. He sent officials to inquire of the LORD for himself and for the people and for all Judah, "concerning the words of this book that has been found. For great is the wrath of the LORD that is kindled against us, because our fathers have not obeyed the words of this book, to do according to all that is written concerning us."
Huldah's Prophecy
The officials went to Huldah the prophetess, the wife of Shallum the keeper of the wardrobe, who lived in Jerusalem in the Second Quarter. She spoke two words. The first was for Judah: the LORD will bring disaster on this place and its inhabitants, all the words of the book the king of Judah has read, because they have forsaken the LORD and burned offerings to other gods. My wrath will be kindled against this place and will not be quenched. The second word was for Josiah personally: because your heart was penitent and you humbled yourself before the LORD when you heard how I spoke against this place and its inhabitants — and you tore your clothes and wept before me — I also have heard you, declares the LORD. Therefore, behold, I will gather you to your fathers, and you shall be gathered to your grave in peace, and your eyes shall not see all the disaster that I will bring upon this place.
The double verdict — judgment on Jerusalem but personal peace for Josiah — is one of the most structurally important moments in the book. It establishes that even the greatest reform Judah had ever seen could not reverse the trajectory set by Manasseh's fifty-five years. The covenant machinery was in motion. Individual repentance could still secure individual mercy; national disaster was no longer preventable.
We find it significant that the officials went to a woman. Huldah the prophetess — a woman, named as a prophetess, consulted by the highest officials of Judah — delivered the most consequential prophetic word in the book's final chapters. Her authority was recognized without hesitation. Her word was delivered with the same "thus says the LORD" that marked male prophets throughout the book. The text treats this as unremarkable. It is the officials who sought her and the king who acted on her word.
Josiah's Comprehensive Reform
Josiah gathered all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem and went up to the house of the LORD. He read in their hearing all the words of the book of the covenant that had been found. He made a covenant before the LORD to walk after the LORD and to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with all his heart and all his soul, and to perform the words of this covenant that were written in the book. All the people joined in the covenant.
What followed was the most thorough reform in the history of the Davidic monarchy. Josiah commanded the high priest to bring out of the temple every vessel made for Baal, for Asherah, and for the host of heaven; they were burned outside Jerusalem. He removed the idolatrous priests who burned offerings to Baal and the sun and moon and constellations. He brought out the Asherah from the house of the LORD and burned it at the Kidron and beat it to dust. He broke down the houses of the male cult prostitutes in the house of the LORD. He defiled the high places from Geba to Beersheba. He smashed the high place of Solomon at the Mount of Olives — the shrines for Ashtoreth, Chemosh, and Milcom that had stood since Solomon built them, four centuries earlier. He went to Bethel, broke down the altar and the high place there, burned the Asherah, and burned human bones on the altar, fulfilling the word the man of God from Judah had spoken three centuries earlier against the altar of Jeroboam — the prophecy that named Josiah by name before he was born.
"Moreover, the altar at Bethel, the high place erected by Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin, that altar also and the high place he broke down and burned, reducing it to dust." — 2 Kings 23:15 (ESV)
He then commanded all the people: "Keep the Passover to the LORD your God, as it is written in this Book of the Covenant." Such a Passover had not been kept since the days of the judges who judged Israel, or during all the days of the kings of Israel or Judah — in the eighteenth year of King Josiah was this Passover kept. He also put away the mediums, the necromancers, the household gods, the idols, and all the abominations.
Before him there was no king like him who turned to the LORD with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might, according to all the Law of Moses, nor did any like him arise after him. But still the LORD did not turn from the burning of his great wrath, because of all the provocations with which Manasseh had provoked him.
Josiah died at Megiddo, struck by Pharaoh Neco's archers when he intercepted the Egyptian army on its march north. He was brought back to Jerusalem and buried in his tomb. All Judah and Jerusalem mourned for him.
We keep coming back to Josiah going to Bethel and burning bones on Jeroboam's altar — the altar that a man of God had spoken against by name, by Josiah's name, three centuries before Josiah was born. The prophecy was fulfilled exactly. And then a few years later Josiah died at Megiddo, and the book begins its final descent into the exile. "Before him there was no king like him" — and yet Manasseh's evil exceeded the reforms' capacity to reverse. The book of Kings refuses to allow Josiah's greatness to override the verdict. The covenant was collective, not merely individual, and had been broken at a depth no single king's obedience could reach.
Last updated: March 3, 2026.
Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.