2 Kings 21:1-9
"21 Manasseh was twelve years old when he began to reign, and he reigned fifty-five years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Hephzibah. 2 And he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, according to the despicable practices of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel. 3 For he rebuilt the high places that Hezekiah his father had destroyed, and he erected altars for Baal and made an Asherah, as Ahab king of Israel had done, and worshiped all the host of heaven and served them. 4 And he built altars in the house of the Lord, of which the Lord had said, “In Jerusalem will I put my name.” 5 And he built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of the Lord. 6 And he burned his son as an offering and used fortune-telling and omens and dealt with mediums and with necromancers. He did much evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger. 7 And the carved image of Asherah that he had made he set in the house of which the Lord said to David and to Solomon his son, “In this house, and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, I will put my name forever. 8 And I will not cause the feet of Israel to wander anymore out of the land that I gave to their fathers, if only they will be careful to do according to all that I have commanded them, and according to all the Law that my servant Moses commanded them.” 9 But they did not listen, and Manasseh led them astray to do more evil than the nations had done whom the Lord destroyed before the people of Israel."
The solemn words in 9 almost make us gasp with horror to think that the nation should have sunk so low after the healthy, God-fearing character of the previous twenty-nine years. To sink lower than the heathen nations who had been cast out of Canaan in the early days because of the enormity of their sins was to descend to almost unspeakable depths of shame and ignominy, and this is a fearful indictment upon Manasseh's abandoned and profligate life. Notice particularly, that he was born during those fateful fifteen years which Hezekiah besought the Lord for - he was twelve when his father died. Had Hezekiah known all that was to come, would he have asked those years of the Lord? Manasseh seems to have gone out of his way to affront the Lord, in a frenzied orgy of evil, and we can only assume that he sold himself completely to the devil. There is certainly much of the demonic recorded in these verses, and all the indications are that he sinned beyond the point of no return and carried Judah with him, as tomorrow's reading will show. There is just so much that even the unaccountable patience and forbearance of God will stand.