2 Kings 21:1-26
21 Manasseh was twelve years old at his accession to the throne, and reigned fifty-five years at Jerusalem; and his mother’s name was Hephsibah.
2 And he did what displeased Jehovah, like the detestable ways of the nations Jehovah dispossessed before the sons of Israel;
3 and he rebuilt the heights his father Hezekiah had destroyed, and set up altars to the Baal, as King Ahab of Israel had, and did reverence to all the legions of the sky and worshiped them,
4 * and built altars in the house of Jehovah, who had said “In Jerusalem I will set my name”;
5 and he built altars to all the legions of the sky in both the courts of Jehovah’s house,
6 and sent his son over through the fire, and practiced fortune-telling and believed in signs, and employed spirit-mediums of different kinds: he did what displeased Jehovah on a great scale, provoking him.
7 * And he set the statue of the asherah in the house of which Jehovah had said to David and his son Solomon “In this house, and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, I will set my name forever,
8 and I will no more set Israel’s feet roving off the soil I gave to their fathers, if only they take care to do just as I commanded them, under all the instructions my servant Moses prescribed to them.”
9 And Manasseh demoralized them into misdoing more than had the nations Jehovah had rooted out before the sons of Israel.
10 And Jehovah said by his servants the prophets
11 “Since King Manasseh of Judah has done these detestable things, doing worse than everything the Amorites before him had done, and has brought Judah too into sin by his fetishes,
12 therefore Israel’s God Jehovah says ‘Here I am bringing on Jerusalem and Judah such an evil that when anybody hears of it both his ears will buzz;
13 and I will stretch over Jerusalem the measuring-line of Samaria and hold up over it the scales of the house of Ahab, and wipe Jerusalem as one wipes a dish, wipe and turn upside down,
14 and abandon the remnant of my estate and give them into the hands of their enemies, and they shall be exposed to the pillaging and plundering of all their enemies,
15 since they have been doing what displeased me and provoking me from the day I brought their fathers out of Egypt to this day.”
16 And Manasseh shed innocent blood too in great quantities, till he had filled Jerusalem with it from portal to portal, besides his sin which he caused Judah to commit in doing what displeased Jehovah.
17 And as to the rest of the history of Manasseh, and all that he did, and his sin that he committed, it is recorded in the chronicles of the kings of Judah.
18 And Manasseh went to rest with his fathers, and was buried in the garden of his palace, ʽUzza’s garden; and his son Amon succeeded him.
19 Amon was twenty-two years old at his accession to the throne, and reigned two years at Jerusalem; and his mother’s name was Meshullemeth the daughter of Harus, from Jotbah.
20 And he did what displeased Jehovah, as his father Manasseh had,
21 and went the whole length of the path his father had walked in, and worshiped the fetishes his father had worshiped, and did reverence to them,
22 and left his fathers’ God Jehovah and did not walk in Jehovah’s way.
23 And Amon’s officers organized a revolution against him and took the king’s life in his palace;
24 but the people killed all who had taken part in the conspiracy against King Amon, and the people installed his son Josiah as his successor.
25 And as to the rest of the history of Amon, what he did, it is recorded in the chronicles of the kings of Judah.
26 * And they buried him in his grave in ʽUzza’s garden, and his son Josiah succeeded him.
Footnotes
^ 21:4 Var. which Jehovah had spoken of, “In
^ 21:7 Or of Asherah
^ 21:26 Var. his father’s grave
