2 Chronicles 33
Manasseh's history as it is recounted here has considerable importance as an example of the future relations of Jehovah with His people. In Hezekiah's history we have seen that God had announced to him Judah's captivity in Babylon as the consequence of the sin of pride which he had committed. Hezekiah and his people humbled themselves before this sentence and God postponed the execution of judgment to a future time. After Hezekiah's death unfaithfulness came to such a point, idolatry took on such proportions that nothing remained but to execute the judgment announced. Manasseh was led captive to Babylon, which in those days was under the power of the Assyrian. Thus, the fate of this king was the prelude and the anticipation in type of the future captivity of Judah, but more importantly, it was also the picture of the state of anguish and humiliation that will precede the final restoration of this people under the reign of the Messiah.
Properly speaking, the symbolic history as Chronicles presents it to us is closed with Manasseh's restoration. Amon succeeds him, beginning anew, so to say, the account of Judah's ruin from the historical point of view. The reign of Josiah which follows is, as it were, the last effort of the Spirit of God again to bring the king according to His counsels onto the scene, an effort without result, on account of the imperfection of the best human instrument whom God could have used, and followed by the lamentable picture of the kingdom coming to its end in Judah.
Let us examine the reign of Manasseh more closely, so different in Chronicles from this same reign in the book of Kings. Its beginning is described to us (2 Chron. 33:1-9) as the most awful imaginable from the religious point of view; all the more awful in that it followed the days of faithful Hezekiah who was crowned with favor and prosperity on account of this very faithfulness. Manasseh's perversity drives quite an abyss between his reign and that of his father: "He wrought evil beyond measure in the sight of Jehovah" (2 Chron. 33:6). In everything he acted according to the abominations of the Canaanites whom the Lord had dispossessed before Israel when their iniquity was full. He rebuilds the high places demolished by Hezekiah, rears up altars to Baal, re-establishes the worship of Astarte, the worship of the stars, sacrifices his children to Molech, practices occult sciences, enchantments, and magic, profanes Jerusalem and the house of God by building altars there to false gods, and sets an abominable idol in the temple, as the Antichrist will do at the time of the end. He defies God Himself who had said: "In this house, and in Jerusalem... will I put My name forever" (2 Chron. 33:7). And this faithful God had added: "Neither will I any more remove the foot of Israel from out of the land that I have appointed to your fathers; if they will only take heed to do all that I commanded them through Moses, according to all the law and the statutes and the ordinances" (2 Chron. 33:8). The people needed only to have obeyed; in every instance where they had shown themselves to be obedient to the law and the commandments God had kept His promise, and now... what more could be done? Manasseh's example was followed by his people. He himself was responsible for this ruin, but the people did not repent any more than did their king. When God spoke to both by His servants the prophets, they paid no attention (2 Chron. 33:10). Then "Jehovah brought upon them the captains of the host of the king of Assyria, who took Manasseh with fetters, and bound him with chains of brass, and carried him to Babylon" (2 Chron. 33:11). That which Jehovah had done in figure to the Assyrian He did in reality to Manasseh: "I will put my ring in thy nose, and my bridle in thy lips" (2 Kings 19:28).
And now with judgment having been consummated, we see the inexhaustible, marvelous, worship-inspiring grace of God appear. Distress has produced its effects in Manasseh's heart: he becomes a striking type of the remnant of Israel in the last days. "When he was in affliction, he besought Jehovah his God, and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers, and prayed to Him. And He was entreated of him, and heard his supplication, and brought him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that Jehovah, he was God" (2 Chron. 33:12-13).
He cried from the bottom of the pit and humbled himself before the God of his fathers: this is repentance. He prayed: this is dependence and the renewal of his relations with Jehovah. he was reinstated in his kingdom and he proclaimed the sovereignty of the God whom he had denied. Grace caused him to acknowledge God in His judgments and grace restored him. From this moment on, Manasseh was a new man.
His reign of 55 years is divided into three periods: idolatry, captivity, return, or: apostasy, judgment, restoration. The latter is complete, because it is the fruit of grace.
From this time onward we see Manasseh at work for Jerusalem and for God. On the north he built the entire outer wall which had offered a weak point to the attacks of the Assyrian; on the southwest he surrounds Ophel with the high wall that was later totally destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar and that was not even rebuilt at the time of Nehemiah. He places the fortified cities of Judah under the supervision of captains of war. As far as worship is concerned, he entirely destroys that of the false gods which he had instituted everywhere; he removes the abominable idol from the house of God where he had set it up and casts all the unclean things out of the city. But the work would have been only half done if Manasseh had not re-established the worship of Jehovah and commanded Judah to serve Him. The high places, it is true, were not entirely suppressed, but at least they were not intended for use for anything but the worship of Jehovah.
We have already noticed that even in death God expresses His approval or His dissatisfaction with the conduct of the kings. If a great number of them, and not always the best, were buried in the city of David and among the sepulchers of the kings (besides, even these cases offer some slight differences), others were deprived of this burial. Thus Joash was buried "in the city of David, but they did not bury him in the sepulchers of the kings," the righteous consequence of the murder of Zechariah (2 Chron. 24:22). Uzziah was buried "in the burial-ground of the kings" (which is different from their sepulchers) because he was leprous, a judgment on his act of profanity (2 Chron. 26:23); godless Ahaz was "buried... in the city, in Jerusalem; but they brought him not into the sepulchers of the kings of Israel" (2 Chron. 28:27); Manasseh was buried in his own house (2 Chron. 33:20) or, as it is expressed in the book of Kings, "in the garden of his own house, in the garden of Uzza" (2 Kings 21:18). Only Manasseh after his repentance seems to me to have personally chosen the place of his burial, feeling himself unworthy of the royal sepulchers. If this is so, it adds a touching feature to his humiliation.
Amon (2 Chron. 33:21-25) returns to the traditions of Manasseh's reign at its beginning. He re-establishes the idolatrous worship of his father, and "did not humble himself before Jehovah, as Manasseh his father had humbled himself; for he, Amon, multiplied trespass" (2 Chron. 33:23). He was slain in his own house and Chronicles does not tell us where he was buried, but 2 Kings 21:26 informs us that like his father he was buried "in his sepulcher, in the garden of Uzza." Manasseh acknowledged his crime by this choice; Amon's crime is declared by God Himself. Later Josiah, greatly honored for his godliness, is buried "in the sepulchers of his fathers" (2 Chron. 35:24). Lastly, of the last four kings, three (Jehoahaz, Jehoiachin, and Zedekiah) die in Egypt or Babylon, whereas Jehoiakim is overtaken by the judgment pronounced in Jeremiah 36:30: "His dead body shall be cast out in the day to the heat, and in the night to the frost."