1. Manasseh was twelve years old when he became king of Judah. He was king for 55 years in Jerusalem.
2. Manasseh did what the Lord said was wrong. He followed the terrible and sinful ways of the nations that the Lord had forced out of the land before the Israelites.
3. Manasseh rebuilt the high places that his father Hezekiah had broken down. Manasseh built altars for the Baal gods and made Asherah poles. He bowed down to the constellations and worshiped those groups of stars.
4. Manasseh built altars for false gods in the Lord’S Temple. The Lord said about the Temple, “My name will be in Jerusalem forever.”
5. He built altars for all the groups of stars in the two yards of the Lord’S Temple.
6. He also burned his own children for a sacrifice in the Valley of Ben Hinnom. He also used magic by doing soothsaying, divination, and sorcery. He talked with mediums and wizards. He did many things that the Lord said were evil and made him angry.
7. Manasseh also made a statue of an idol and put it in God’s Temple—the very same Temple that God had talked about to David and his son Solomon. God had said, “I will put my name in this house and in Jerusalem—the city that I chose from all the cities in all the tribes—and my name will be there forever!
8. I will not continue to keep the Israelites off the land that I chose to give to their ancestors. But they must obey everything I commanded them. The Israelites must obey all the laws, rules, and commands that I gave Moses to give to them.”
9. Manasseh encouraged the people of Judah and the people living in Jerusalem to do wrong. They were worse than the nations that were in the land before the Israelites—and the Lord destroyed those people.
10. The Lord spoke to Manasseh and to his people, but they refused to listen.
11. So the Lord brought commanders from the king of Assyria’s army to attack Judah. These commanders captured Manasseh and made him their prisoner. They put hooks in him and brass chains on his hands and took him to the country of Babylon.
12. When these troubles came to him, Manasseh begged for help from the Lord his God. He humbled himself before the God of his ancestors.
13. Manasseh prayed to God and begged him for help. God heard his begging and felt sorry for him, so he let Manasseh return to Jerusalem and to his throne. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord was the true God.