Lives of Scripture

Manasseh, son of the godly Hezekiah, became Judah's most wicked king: he rebuilt the high places his father had destroyed, built altars to Baal, worshiped "all the host of heaven," practiced sorcery, and even sacrificed his own sons in the fire, filling Jerusalem "from one end to another" with innocent blood (2 Kings 21:1-16). His fifty-five-year reign was the longest in Judah or Israel, and Scripture holds him chiefly responsible for the judgment that would eventually fall on Jerusalem (2 Kings 21:11-15; 24:3-4). Yet his story does not end in unrelieved darkness: 2 Chronicles alone records that the Assyrians captured Manasseh, bound him with bronze shackles, and took him to Babylon, where "in his distress he entreated the favor of the LORD his God and humbled himself greatly" (2 Chronicles 33:10-13). God heard him, restored him to his throne, and Manasseh spent his remaining years removing the foreign gods and altars he had built, repairing the altar of the LORD, and telling Judah to serve God alone — though the high places, later destroyed by his grandson Josiah's reforms, show the damage of his earlier decades outlasted his own lifetime (2 Chronicles 33:14-17). Manasseh's story is Scripture's starkest picture that even the worst offender can be genuinely restored by God's mercy.