The Story of Manasseh in the Bible

The son of Judah’s best king becomes its worst. Manasseh takes the throne at twelve and holds it for fifty-five years, longer than anyone else who ever ruled in Jerusalem.

2 Kings tells his story and stops. 2 Chronicles tells the same story and then adds a chapter nobody expects, in which the worst king in Judah’s history is brought back.

The Story of Manasseh

Manasseh was twelve years old when he began to reign, and reigned fifty and five years in Jerusalem. He did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD, after the abominations of the heathen.

The list reads like a point-by-point reversal of his father. He built up again the high places which Hezekiah his father had destroyed. He reared up altars for Baal and made a grove, as did Ahab king of Israel, and worshipped all the host of heaven. Then he built altars in the house of the LORD itself, and altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts of the temple, and set a graven image of the grove in the house where God had said he would put his name.

He made his son pass through the fire, observed times, used enchantments, and dealt with familiar spirits and wizards. And Manasseh seduced the people to do more evil than did the nations whom the LORD destroyed before them.

The prophets brought the sentence. Behold, I am bringing such evil upon Jerusalem and Judah, that whosoever heareth of it, both his ears shall tingle. Jerusalem would be wiped as a man wipeth a dish, wiping it, and turning it upside down. And one more charge is recorded: Manasseh shed innocent blood very much, till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another.

In 2 Kings that is where he ends. He slept with his fathers and was buried in the garden of his own house. 2 Chronicles 33 tells the rest. The LORD spake to Manasseh and to his people, but they would not hearken, so the captains of the king of Assyria took Manasseh among the thorns, bound him with fetters, and carried him to Babylon.

And when he was in affliction, he besought the LORD his God, and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers. God heard his supplication and brought him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the LORD he was God. He took away the strange gods and the idol out of the house of the LORD, cast the altars he had built out of the city, repaired the altar of the LORD, and commanded Judah to serve him.

What the Story of Manasseh Teaches Us

Reading only 2 Kings gives you a complete, closed story of a man who ruined a nation. Reading 2 Chronicles alongside it changes the ending without softening anything that came before. Both accounts are in the Bible, and neither cancels the other.

The repentance does not undo the damage. The altars come down, but 2 Kings 23:26 still says God’s anger against Judah stood because of all the provocations that Manasseh had provoked him withal. Forgiveness and consequence run at the same time, and the text does not try to reconcile them.

The turning point is the least dignified moment of his life. He is a prisoner among thorns, in fetters, in a foreign capital, and that is where he humbled himself greatly. Fifty-five years on a throne did not produce it and a few months in chains did.

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