1. Manasseh was twelve years old when he became king, and he reigned fifty-five years in Jerusalem.
2. He did what was evil in the Lord’s sight, following the abominable practices of the nations whom the Lord dispossessed before the Israelites.
3. He rebuilt the high places which Hezekiah his father had torn down. He set up altars to the Baals, and also made asherahs. He bowed down to the whole host of heaven and served them.
4. He built altars in the house of the Lord, of which the Lord had said: In Jerusalem shall my name be forever;
5. and he built altars to the whole host of heaven in the two courts of the house of the Lord.
6. It was he, too, who immolated his children by fire in the Valley of Ben-hinnom. He practiced soothsaying and divination, and reintroduced the consulting of ghosts and spirits.He did much evil in the Lord’s sight and provoked him to anger.
7. An idol he had made he placed in the house of God, of which God had said to David and to his son Solomon: In this house and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, I shall set my name forever.
8. I will no longer make Israel step out of the land I assigned to your ancestors, provided that they are careful to observe all I commanded them, the entire law, the statutes, and the ordinances given by Moses.
9. Manasseh misled Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem into doing even greater evil than the nations the Lord had destroyed at the coming of the Israelites.
10. The Lord spoke to Manasseh and his people, but they paid no attention.