“My son, hear the instruction of your father, and do not forsake the law of your mother” (Prov 1:8).
With the death of Hezekiah, whom “all Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem honored…at his death” (2 Chron 32:33), his son Manasseh ascended the throne. You may recall that Joseph named one of his sons Manasseh. The name means “causing to forget” since Joseph had a lot of forgiving and forgetting to do. This Manasseh, however, forgot everything he should have remembered about the Lord’s blessings during his father’s reign, and remembered everything he should have forgotten about his grandfather’s evil ways. “Manasseh was twelve years old when he became king, and he reigned fifty-five years in Jerusalem. But he did evil in the sight of the Lord, according to the abominations of the nations whom the Lord had cast out” (2 Chron 33:1-2). What did he do that was so evil? What didn’t he do! “He rebuilt the high places which Hezekiah his father had broken down; he raised up altars for the Baals, and made wooden images; and he worshiped all the host of heaven and served them…And he built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of the Lord. Also he caused his sons to pass through the fire in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom; he practiced soothsaying, used witchcraft and sorcery, and consulted mediums and spiritists…He even set a carved image, the idol which he had made, in the house of God” (vv 3-7)! The bottom line: “So Manasseh seduced Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to do more evil than the nations whom the Lord had destroyed before the children of Israel” (v 9). Think of it! Instead of adopting the demon-gods of one pagan nation, he adopted them all! Yet the only deity he would need in the days ahead was the only One he ignored. And that One would perform one of the greatest miracles in history!