The Reign of Manasseh, King of Judah 687/6-642/1 BC. Co-regent from 696/95 BC.
In this passage the prophetic author, who was as we have seen always very selective, concentrated his attention on the failures of Manasseh and the future consequences for Judah. He mentions neither his Babylonian exile, nor his repentance (see 2 Chronicles 33:1-20), nor is there any mention at all of his subjection to Assyria. As far as he was concerned they were irrelevant to his main purpose, which was to emphasise that from a religious viewpoint Manasseh was overall a bad king for Judah, and in his view left a bad legacy. While Manasseh himself had changed in his final years he was unable fully to reverse what he had done, both to Judah and to his family. The high places which Hezekiah had destroyed had been restored and the people had been turned back to the old unregenerate ways of worship, and even though outwardly in his final years that worship was of YHWH, it would almost certainly be the old syncretistic Yahwism of old. People commanded by the king to alter their ways of worship would not do it wholeheartedly. Above all he could not undo what he had taught his son in his earlier days, and his son thus continued to follow in the footsteps of his earlier unregenerate days, advancing the downward path of Judah and the triumph of idolatry. Manasseh had laid down a pathway that led to destruction which his late conversion could not prevent.
It is true that Manasseh had the misfortune to reign when Assyria was at the height of its power which put certain restraints on him, (not mentioned by the author), but he went far beyond what that required of him religiously. He reigned under Esarhaddon, whose conquests included Egypt reaching up even into upper Egypt, and then under Ashur-bani-pal who followed him. Assyrian inscriptions make clear that, along with many other kings, he was (humanly speaking inevitably), a vassal of both. He was also to suffer for his father's sin concerning friendship with Babylon, for it was probably his alliance with the then king of Babylon, Shamash-shum-ukin, the rebellious brother of Esarhaddon, that resulted in his being dragged ‘by hooks' to Babylon by Esarhaddon when that rebellion was quelled, and there he was judged and punished accordingly. After repenting he returned to Judah and sought to mitigate what he had previously done, but it was mainly in vain. The people may have appeared outwardly to respond to his repentance in his later life but it was not from the heart. His repentance came too late to alter the ingrained inward effects of his earlier evil days, effects which would rear their heads again during the reign of his son.
We are not told who reigned while he was in custody in Babylon, but it may well have been his son, with Assyrian overseers. And his son had presumably continued his evil ways, and while somewhat restrained when Manasseh returned a changed man, would allow his evil to blossom fully once Manasseh had died. That in the author's view was Manasseh's legacy. Like Ahab before him (1 Kings 21:27-29), from the kingship point of view his late repentance could not make up for what he had been and done for most of his life, and that had been abysmal. What he had earlier done had been a number of steps too far, and it had guaranteed the final judgment on Judah and Jerusalem, which was the author's concern.
The passage divides up into five parts:
Overall Analysis.
a Introductory Detail (2 Kings 21:1-2).
b Summary Of His Evil Life (2 Kings 21:3-9).
c YHWH's Consequent Judgment (2 Kings 21:10-15).
b Further Summary Of His Evil Life (2 Kings 21:16).
a Final Comments (2 Kings 21:17-18).
Introductory Detail (2 Kings 21:1-2).
The account of Manasseh's reign commences with the usual introductory formula and verdict on his reign
‘Manasseh was twelve years old when he began to reign, and he reigned five and fifty years in Jerusalem, and his mother's name was Hephzibah.'
The twelve years refers to when he became co-regent with his father in 696/95 BC, and the fifty five years of reign included that co-regency. As usual the name of the important queen mother is given. Hephzibah means ‘my delight is in her' (compare Isaiah 62:4 which may well have been written around this time).
‘And he did what was evil in the sight of YHWH, after the abominations of the nations whom YHWH cast out before the children of Israel.'
The verdict on his reign was that he did evil in the sight of YHWH, having walked in all the abominations of the nations whom YHWH had cast out before the children of Israel, the nations whose behaviour had been so evil that YHWH had ordered either their destruction or their expulsion from the land.