CHAPTER 33

¹Twelve years old was Manasseh when he became king, and fifty-five years he was king in Jerusalem. ²And he did what was evil in the eyes of the LORD like the abominations of the nations that the LORD had dispossessed before the Israelites. ³And he rebuilt the high places that Hezekiah his father had smashed and put up altars to the Baalim and made cultic poles and bowed down to all the array of the heavens and worshipped them. ⁴And he built altars in the house of the LORD of which the LORD had said, “In Jerusalem My name shall be forever.” ⁵And he built altars to all the array of the heavens in both courts of the house of the LORD. ⁶And he passed his sons through the fire in the Valley of Ben-Hinnom and performed sorcery and divined and did witchcraft and conjured ghosts and familiar spirits. He did much that was evil in the eyes of the LORD to vex Him. ⁷And he placed in the house of God a sculpted image that he had made of which God had said to David and to Solomon his son, “In this house and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen from all the tribes of Israel will I set My name forever. ⁸And I will no longer remove the feet of Israel from the soil on which I set your fathers—but only if they keep to do what I charged them in regard to all the teaching and the statutes and the laws through Moses.” ⁹And Manasseh led Judah and the dwellers of Jerusalem astray to do what was evil more than the nations that the LORD had destroyed before the Israelites. ¹⁰And the LORD spoke to Manasseh and to his people, but they did not listen. ¹¹And the LORD brought against them the army commanders of the king of Assyria, and they captured Manasseh with hooks and bound him in fetters and led him off to Babylonia. ¹²And in his distress he implored the LORD his God and greatly humbled himself before the God of his fathers. ¹³And he prayed to Him and entreated Him, and He heard his plea and brought him back to Jerusalem to his kingship, and Manasseh knew that the LORD was God. ¹⁴And afterward, he built an outer wall for the City of David west of the Gihon in the wadi on the approach to the Fish Gate, and it encircled the Ophel. And he raised it very high, and he posted military commanders in all the fortified towns in Judah. ¹⁵And he removed the alien gods and the image from the house of the LORD and all the altars that he had built on the mount of the house of the LORD in Jerusalem, and he flung them outside the city. ¹⁶And he repaired the altar of the LORD and sacrificed upon it well-being sacrifices and thanksgiving sacrifices and said to Judah to worship the LORD God of Israel. ¹⁷But the people were still sacrificing on the high places, though only to the LORD their God. ¹⁸And the rest of the acts of Manasseh and his prayer to his God and the words of the seers who spoke to him in the name of the LORD God of Israel, they are in the acts of the kings of Israel ¹⁹and his prayer and the granting of his entreaty and all his offense and his betrayal and the sites on which he built high places and set up cultic poles and idols before the time he humbled himself, they are written with the words of his seers. ²⁰And Manasseh lay with his fathers, and they buried him in his house, and Amon his son became king in his stead.

²¹Twenty-two years old was Amon when he became king, and two years he was king in Jerusalem. ²²And he did what was evil in the eyes of the LORD as Manasseh his father had done, and to all the idols that Manasseh his father had made he sacrificed and he worshipped them. ²³And he did not humble himself before the LORD as Manasseh his father had humbled himself, for he, Amon, incurred even more guilt. ²⁴And his servants hatched a plot against him and put him to death in his house. ²⁵And the people of the land struck down all the plotters against King Amon, and the people of the land made Josiah his son king in his stead.