1. Manasseh was twelve years old when he became king, and he was king in Jerusalem for fifty-five years.
2. But he did evil in the sight of the Lord, according to the abominations of the nations whom the Lord previously cast out before the sons of Israel.
3. And he turned again to build the high places that his father Hezekiah had torn down, and he set up altars to the Baals, and made Asherah poles, and worshipped the starry assembly of heaven and served them.
4. And he built altars in the house of the Lord where the Lord said, “In Jerusalem My name will be perpetual.”
5. And he built altars for the starry assembly of heaven in the two courtyards of the house of the Lord.
6. He even made his sons pass through the fire in the Valley of Ben Hinnom; and he had conjurers, and practitioners of divination and sorcery, and necromancers, and mediums. So he did a great amount of evil in the eyes of the Lord, so that God was provoked.
7. And he set the carved image of a statue that he made and put in the house of God where God said to David and to Solomon his son, “In this house and in Jerusalem where I have chosen from among all the tribes of Israel, there I have set My name perpetually.
8. And I will not again remove the foot of Israel from the ground that I have designated to your fathers, if only they will keep on doing everything that I have commanded them, the whole law, statutes, and judgments from the hand of Moses.”
9. So Manasseh made Judah and those living in Jerusalem to wander and to perform more evil than the nations that the Lord destroyed from before Israel.
10. The Lord spoke to Manasseh and his people, but they did not pay attention.