40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 2 Kings 21:1-18 (Episode 347)

Episode Date: January 31, 2023

Manasseh begins to reign, and sin increases everywhere. The sin of Judah surpasses the nations before it. And God has been provoked since the day Moses led Israel out of Egypt. Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network Donate HWSS Regional Conference 1517 YouTube

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast and check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. And while you're over there, make sure you check out all the things that 1517 is doing. We've got daily articles. We've got free online academies. We've got tons of published books. We've got events.

And one of the events that you can go to is the regional event, the Here We Still Stand regional event, in northwest Arkansas. That's May 5th and 6th, and it's going to be in Bentonville. And you can come hang out with Chad and myself. It's going to be two days of going through Paul's letter to the Galatians. We're going to find out if, you know, the Apostle Paul is cool with several Gospels. I'm here to tell you that the answer is no. And he probably uses some of the most colorful language in the entire New Testament to explain to you why he's not okay with such a thing.

So if you want to come be a part of that, it's going to be a good time. You can just go to the events page at 1517 and find that event, or you can click the link in the show notes that says regional event, and you can get registered. It is nearing the sold-out point. It's getting close to being sold out. It will most certainly sell out. So grab those tickets if you want to come. Chad, last episode, we had to say goodbye to Hezekiah.

He got sick, and he didn't like that idea, and he didn't want to die. And God said, you know what? I'm going to add some years to your life. And then he did, in fact, die. But before he died, he got the hard word. He got the hard word from the prophet that told him that some bad stuff was going to come down the pipe. But Hezekiah didn't take this as a bad word. This came as very good news to him because he said,

Oh, this all sounds like it's going to happen after my additional 15 years. So good for me. The rest of Judah, I guess, is going to be in deep trouble. But it sounds like I'm going to be all right. So thanks for the good word. and uh then hezekiah did indeed die and we buried him and that is one of the the strange parts of the story of hezekiah is the word is it's the hard word man sometimes the prophet comes in with the hard word and it's not typical that the hearer hears that hard word which is obviously bad

and says appreciate it i would that's i mean you just made my day yeah i was thinking you know one these days one of us needs to write a book called bad prayers in the bible yeah hezekiah's prayer will be uh will be one of those uh added added to it or several several others how not to how not to pray others yeah how not to pray from right from the bible yeah i think luther has that uh that that little thing that he wrote for his barbers that called how to pray i believe that's what that's called and that's really nice by the way if you're wondering how to pray it's a great little book you can you can find it on amazon how to pray it's really short and you could uh he got some great insights uh yeah maybe chad and i will uh you know write the accompanying volume uh that

you could have which also be a short book but uh it will be called how not to pray and i think if you put these things together you probably have a pretty idea good idea what to do and what not to do yeah yeah we got plenty of examples of both positive and negative from the scriptures so that was hezekiah yeah we got him uh we got him buried slept with his fathers and we're told at the very end here of second kings 20 that his son manasseh reigned in his place uh manasseh is as we're going to find out very very quickly not two verses into this chapter manasseh is no hezekiah so you do kind of see this back and forth between some of the kings of israel where you'll have a great king or at least, you know, a fairly good king. And then his son comes along and he's just terrible.

And then his son will come along and he's not too bad. And then the grandson, he kind of goes back and forth, this seesaw movement from good to bad, bad to good. So Hezekiah, great king, we learned all about him. He wasn't perfect, of course, as we were just discussing with regard to when he got sick. But comparatively speaking, he was a great king when you look at him in light of the rest of the kings of, certainly, Israel, but also Judah. Don't you think it's true, Chad, as you look through the, whether it's kings or just sort of the heroes of the Old Testament and stuff, and I mean, obviously, all of their lives are littered with, you know, stuff that you're like, well, that's not great, that's not great,

ooh, that's pretty good, oh, that was, that's, oh, God's certainly happy you did that. It seems like the hardest thing to do in the Old Testament, maybe just in the Bible in general, we don't have as much, like, sort of narrative stuff in the New Testament, obviously, but I think this is true of life. It's certainly true in the Old Testament. Finishing super well seems extraordinarily difficult. I don't say that. I'm 52. I'm like, what's coming down the pike for me?

I just look at all... I guess Solomon maybe just was terrible, and then maybe he finished okay, but David putting out hit lists on his deathbed and stuff, Hezekiah being like, oh, best news I ever heard. after giving this terrible prayer. It just seems like so many guys, even Moses is like, I've had it.

I'm going to hit this rock a bunch of times. I don't know if it's just old age and you just have had it and you're just done, but it does seem like in the scriptures so many times guys, they'll be like, this is the guy, and then at the end you're like, why'd you do that? It's so true.

Yeah, there's so many examples in scripture to ignore and you know we could add to that actually examples that we know from from our own experience where these sorts of things happen yeah yeah sinners can be sinners and the longer you're around as a sinner the higher likelihood is that things aren't going to be great toward the end uh and yeah that's david that was solomon i mean solomon started out great right yeah all i want god is to uh i want to i want to have a heart that just listens to your word that's really all i want i'm not i want money i don't want power i don't want the life of my enemies just give me give me a listening heart god and at the end he's like you know what we need we need more temples

to other gods yeah so anyway that's so hezekiah ends ends the way he does he does in a in a selfish sort of way and then manasseh comes along manasseh's son now hezekiah was a reformer He's the one who tried to get rid of all the rank idolatry and all of its various manifestations in Israel and did a great job of it. Then his son comes along and he's like, you know what, everything my dad did, I think I'm going to undo.

And not only am I going to undo it, I'm going to unreform it. So his dad's a reformer, he's an anti-reformer. I'm going to make it even worse than it was before my dad came along. so I'm going to outdo my dad just in the opposite direction he was a cleanser

of idolatry I'm going to be a builder and a perpetuator and an expander of idolatry that was Manasseh you gotta wonder if Manasseh is this dude just a rank idolater or is he just really not like his dad yeah or a little bit of both

it could be one of these father son antagonisms going on this seems a little bit too much where you're like, did something happen? We don't have the narrative where you and your dad had an argument that you never forgave him for, and the second he died, you're like,

all right, now this is going to happen, dad. Because this is a lot to happen with one guy. Yeah, it's a David and Absalom kind of situation, possibly. Yeah, this isn't like the slow fade into idolatry. Like, oh, and then Hezekiah was great, but over the course of the next five kings, you know things really you know really you know really regressed back into idolatry no no no this is a it's a full dive into uh into idolatry this is like you know this is like

this is like if a president comes in and like issues a bunch of executive orders right and then like the other guys the other party guy gets in and like on day one he's like reversed reversed reversed reversed and like does he hate them all i mean probably hates them all but some of it you know it's a lot of spite like i'm about to first thing i'm doing is undoing every single thing that you did that i can possibly undo that's just theoretical of course that would never that wouldn't happen never actually happened yeah and you know to add to and i know we're we're about to get into the details here but just to kind of add to this right away we're told that so he's 12 when he takes takes over the throne now you know don't don't imagine that this uh

pre-pubescent kid is uh actually you know making all the decisions he would have had uh somebody you know a senior advisor who would basically be guiding him through decision making when he's when he's young uh but you know probably late teens he's he's basically taken over he's in charge fully but what i was going to say is he is uh so he has the longest tenure of any king in the south so not only is he the worst like literally he is the worst so we we heard about hezekiah he's the best uh and now his son comes along well he's the worst and there is really no argument about this you can't get any lower than what manasseh does and we'll demonstrate that as we go through these verses but he has this longest tenure 55 years in jerusalem over half a century so nobody else

reigns as long as manasseh does which tells you then that not only did you know he he uh bring about all this idolatry but it was it became the status quo it was the state sponsored worship for over over five decades and that tells you how bad things got in israel and also explains why as we will also hear shortly god after this just long long patience with israel finally is like you know what i'm done you guys are going into exile so 12 years old uh when he begins to reign reigns 55 years all about his his name uh kind of interesting because so you might be thinking wasn't there of a nasa before in the bible and yes there was in fact uh if you are a long-time listener or even if you're not and you just happen to know the book of genesis you know that

And Joseph, after he got stabbed in the back by his brother, sold into slavery, ends up in prison, out of prison, Pharaoh's right-hand man, all of that goes on. He's given a wife, the daughter of an Egyptian priest, and they have kids together. And one of those kids, a son, is named Manasseh. Same name, same spelling in Hebrew. But the reason he gives him that name, it's a play on the Hebrew verb nashah, which means to forget. so he names him manasseh from nasha to forget because he says that god has made me forget all my hardship and all my father's house that's genesis 41 51 so it isn't interesting that so joseph gives his sons the name manasseh while he's in exile and now a guy named that same name

manasseh is going to be the one that causes that is like the last straw on the camel's back that's going to cause Israel or Judah specifically to go into into exile it's a big heavy straw big big heavy it's like all these other straws and then like this I don't know how many of these straws I can hit more of these straws I can handle and then like this gigantic like the biggest straw you ever saw like plants on the pile yeah like telephone pole yeah so uh anyway So that's his name. He's the forgetful, the forgetful king. And so he reigns for 55 years.

His mother's name is Hephzibah. And verse 2, here's where we're getting into the nitty gritty. He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. Nothing new there. We've heard that language before. According, so what kind of evil? according to the despicable practices of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel.

So, of course, we've covered that many times. And if you were with us in Joshua, then you heard about how the Lord drove out these people who practice all these despicable sorts of things. And we're going to hear more about what these things were in just a minute. But it's important that it's not just a comparison that's being made, but it's a reversal that's happening here. So we've talked before about there was a canonization happening in the history of Israel. It really begins with Solomon.

Then it takes off when you have the split between the Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom, where the Northern Kingdom under Jeroboam and the two golden calves and Dan and Bethel, that began this process of canonization, where basically Israel becomes like the very nations that were driven out by the Lord to be replaced by Israel. So the very ones who got expelled because of their idolatry now become the model that Israel has adopted. And so you know where you can see where this is going. So here are the details. What kind of despicable practices and what did Manasseh do? Well, here's your list. This is verse three and following. First of all, he rebuilt the high places that his dad had destroyed, and he erected altars for Baal and

made an Asherah, as Ahab, king of Israel, has done. Well, there you go. There's a big red flag there. He's imitating what Ahab, king in the north, had done. Made an Asherah, just like Ahab it done and he worshiped all the host of heaven and served them now not done verse four he built altars in the house of the lord altars in the house of the lord of which the lord had said in jerusalem will i put my name verse five and he built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of the lord now you think surely that's it nope verse six and he burned his son as an offering and used fortune telling and omens and dealt with mediums and with necromancers and he did much evil in the sight of the lord provoking him to anger and i saw one more and

then i'll stop the carved image of asherah that he had made he set in the house 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 so how's that for a resume let's see let's see what we what's left out i mean i can't think of anything that he didn't do that he should not have done yeah i mean it's one thing if you just go back and you're like all right i'm putting up the high places i'm putting up the places where people can worship i mean god would not like that you know he wouldn't like that because he liked it so much when hezekiah got rid of it uh and obviously like i mean the thing that i mean

He used fortune tellers and omens and dealt with mediums and necromancers. You're like, yeah, I know that God doesn't like any of that stuff. He doesn't like it. But, dude, you could be doing all that stuff, and maybe the people miss that stuff, and you're trying to give them what they want or something like that. But when you go to sacrificing your son, as an offering i mean if there was the telephone pole that landed on the camel's back it doesn't

got to be it yeah yeah i mean it really is there is there anything any of us can conceive that's that's worse than that now we've talked about this before this is a you know this child child sacrifice or human sacrifice was was practiced in various places uh in the ancient near east and uh We've seen that more than once before. It's literally causing one to pass through the fire. And if you do read in the commentaries and some of the scholarly literature, there's some debate over exactly what that means. But the vast majority of opinions is that we're talking here about human sacrifice, which is not, you know, it's not like this was unheard of in that world. And, you know, the thought was, well, if I really want this God on my side, well, then I got to give that God what he thinks is the greatest sacrifice.

Well, that greatest sacrifice would be would be a human sacrifice, a child. So he did that and all the other things that are there as well. Now, there are some some details here which I think are significant in various sorts of ways. For one, so in verse three, we have language of construction. So he rebuilt the high places. He made an Asherah. And then a little bit farther down, verse 7, the carved image of Asherah that he made, he set in the house of the Lord. So this language of banah, which is to build, and asah, which means to make, there's a pretty good argument that at least what is hinted at here is that this guy, Manasseh, is a builder.

Well, who else was a builder? Who else was the son of a great king who built and led the nation into idolatry? Solomon. So there's sort of a typology that some people see that's happening here where David is paralleled by Hezekiah. You know, both great kings, both upheld as faithful to the Lord, not idolaters. And then what happens? Well, their sons come along. David's son Solomon comes along.

He builds a whole lot of stuff, but he also is an idolater. and then Manasseh comes along who's the son of Hezekiah and he also is a builder a maker but again just like Solomon does he engages in this idolatry so you can kind of see here if you look at the big structure of Samuel first Samuel through second Kings we we begin with the United Kingdom and you've got David but then what happens after Solomon right after right after his death you have the split of the kingdom so things are already kind of beginning to to fall apart then at the beginning and now you get here toward the end and once more you have a david-like king hezekiah and you have a sodomite-like king manasseh who's engaging in this solomonic kind

of idolatry which then is going to precipitate the final destruction of of israel when they're going to go into into exile so you got that going on and also um you know i was wondering and i And I think I figured it out. I was wondering why twice, not once, but twice in verse four and then in verse seven is this quotation about how God in Jerusalem has put his name there. So, I mean, why once? Okay. But why does it come up twice?

And I think I found out the reason. So the Hebrew verb that's used there for put my name, and we've seen this in other places where God put his name in the temple. The Hebrew verb is seem, which means to set, to put to place. Now, that is the exact verb that's used here in verse 7. And the carved image of Asherah that Manasseh had made, he set in the house of which the Lord has said, David and Solomon. In this house, I will set or put my name forever. now unfortunately many translations including the ESV don't translate this same exact verb

with the same English verb so for instance ESV has that that he set the Asherah in the house of which God said I will put my name forever now I don't know why they'd use put in both places that would have at least helped us to identify that we're looking at the same Hebrew verb but whatever the reason is in Hebrew it's the same thing so he seem he set or he put his name in that house and then what did manasseh do he turned around and he switched things out and he set or he put an asherah in that place so you have god's name being replaced by this uh idolatrous pole which is the uh the representative of asherah yeah sometimes i feel like so chad you and i have both written stuff you know we both uh are writers i suppose the um you know when you're

write in a sentence, in a book or an article or something, and then you'll say, I don't want to use that word again. I just used it. I don't want to use that word twice in the same sentence, so I'll use a similar word because that's good writing. I'm not going to use the same word over and over again. I don't feel like you should use that strategy when translating the Bible because the Bible intentionally uses the same word over and over again. It's not supposed to be written the way that we would try to creatively write something by using an interesting selection of words and making sure that we don't look like we have a limited vocabulary. God doesn't have a limited vocabulary, so when he decides to put the same word in the same sentence, you don't need to

take it upon yourself to fix it. You don't need to be grammarly for the Word of God. Can I make a suggestion? Consider using a different word so it's not redundant. It's supposed to be redundant. Yeah, the biblical authors didn't have a thesaurus. You know, they didn't like, I just use set. What's another word I can use? A put. That's a good idea. Consult my Roger's thesaurus and see what another word would be.

No, you have the repetition of certain words, nouns, verbs, whatever. I mean, this is quite on purpose. It wasn't like they were just limited in vocabulary. They did this on purpose so that you could see how there is a connection between these two things. Now, I mean, we could go into the weeds here with translational philosophies, you know, and I understand there's different ideas behind translation. You know, some people want to, okay, look at the Greek, look at the Hebrew, and be like, okay, that's the way they wrote it, but how would we say it in English? And so it's more of a paraphrase, kind of a looser, freer translation. I mean, there are translations that do that, and that's fine, as long as the reader's aware of that.

And this would be like more thought for thought than word for word. Yes, exactly. But sometimes I would argue that you lose thought for thought if you don't get a little bit word for word. I mean, the thought here is that the words are the same. Yeah, the thought is that Manasseh was replacing the name of God with an Asherah pole. That is the thought. And it just happens that that is actually the word, too. that is that is conveying this so i mean i i don't know i i can't encounter these i wouldn't

say all the time but on a pretty frequent basis where translations will they'll alter the verb in english for not even like it makes a huge stylistic difference it just muddies the waters as far as i'm confused and and it and it doesn't allow english readers to be able to say oh i see what you just did there you replace the name of god with with an asherah yeah and all that being said some people are like super critical like it seems like they're always complaining about like i don't think you need to know greek or hebrew to understand the bible for the most part english translations are very good yeah yeah i don't want to be a translation basher uh i don't i'm i don't want to come i don't mean to come across that way let me put let me put it that

way. It just, I'm just kind of voicing frustration I sometimes have with, you know, choices. Of course, it's fine. I mean, I read the Bible in translation all the time. I also read it in the Greek and Hebrew. And yeah, you're going to, I mean, translations are good. Use them and rely on them. Just realize, of course, they can't do everything perfectly. That's the way translations are so anyway uh so back to this uh we can kind of see what's going on here uh with a lot of the the instances of idolatry uh everything from the high places to the asherah to oh all the worshiping the host of heaven i was going to comment on that too uh we see that condemned other places jeremiah i think in two places talks about how people in his day were worshiping all

the host of heaven and in that way they were doing something which was very common in ancient world i I mean, you look up, just look up sun worship sometime, do a Google search for it, and you'll see how sun worship especially was just pervasive throughout the ancient Near East. You have Shamash, who is a sun god. You've got Egyptian sun gods. I mean, it's just this idea that the solar deity, as it's referred to, it's predictable. It gives, of course, light and life and all this illumination. you can understand why the sun would be held as a deity in the ancient world. So that was popular everywhere.

And of course, then it became popular among the idolatrous Israelites. So they're worshiping all the hosts of heaven, just along with all their Canaanite, Egyptian, Assyrian people as well. So anyway, we went through, I think, verse 7. Let's see what else is coming up here. So this is picking up what God what God said to to David and to his son Solomon about putting his name there in the house. And he says, I will not cause the feet of Israel to wander anymore out of the land that I gave to their fathers. So they're going to they're going to stay there.

I'm not going to make their feet go elsewhere. They're going to stay there in this land that I gave them. 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. So, you got it made. I got this land for you. I got these kings for you. I got all this stuff for you.

Really, all I'm asking is, don't go whoring after other gods. So, keep worshiping me. That's the main, keep the main thing, the main thing. And of course, that main thing did not remain the main thing, as we have seen over and over and over. And now we see, you know, with with lurid colors here in the reign of Manasseh. In fact, that's what it says in verse nine. But they did not Shema.

They didn't listen. And Manasseh led them astray to do. Listen to this. To do more evil than the nations had done and the Lord destroyed before the people of Israel. so he's out canoning the canaanites i guess is what we would say he's out uh he's out idolizing the idolaters that the lord kicked out before them all right so that takes us through uh verse nine let's see what else we got going on verse 10 and the lord said by his servants the prophets because manasseh king of judah has committed these abominations and has done things more evil

than all that the Amorites did who were before him come back to that man because he's made Judah also to sin with his idols therefore thus says the Lord the God of Israel you know something not good is coming here so here's what God says because he's done all this behold I am bringing upon Jerusalem and Judah such disaster literally evil such disaster or such evil that the ears of everyone who hears of it will tingle and i will stretch over jerusalem the measuring line of samaria and the plum line of the house of ahab and i will wipe jerusalem as one wipes a dish wiping it and turning it upside down and i will forsake the remnant of my heritage and give them into the hand of their enemies and they shall become a prey

and a spoil to all their enemies, because they have done what is evil in my sight and have provoked me to anger. Now listen, this is the closing of this divine speech. This is the mic drop moment here at the very end of it. So, because they've done this, provoked me to anger, since the day their fathers came out of Egypt even to this day. This is that from the second the sandals hit the desert uh sand god has been being provoked the provocation has not ceased it you know it had a little respite for the provocation during the during hezekiah uh but for the most part it's been nothing but provocation since the day that moses said let's go yeah right centuries after centuries after centuries uh when you get to that last sentence since the day their fathers

came out of the land of egypt even to this day i mean that hits me two different ways number one it hits me that uh like you were saying i mean all this provocation and it also hits me in a way that uh in a strange sort of way that is comforting because that means that god has been provoked and provoked and provoked and provoked and provoked in all these various sorts of ways over the course of centuries. And yet, it's only at this point that finally God says, all right, I'm done. Yeah, and I think that the idea here is—and I think we've said this before, lots of people have said this—but the judgment of God sometimes looks like God just deciding to give you what you want, or give you over to what you want, or just taking His hand off of you. You can correct me if I'm

wrong here, Chad, but in a lot of ways, Judah doesn't have any business still existing. No, that should have been decimated long ago. There's powers all over the place, and what is it that's preserving them? How do they even exist still? I mean, how is any number of different people groups and powers not just wipe them out? And the answer is that, well, they still exist because God has protected them and preserved them. And really, all he's saying, you know, this wiping the dishes, I mean, God's going to, obviously this is how it works, but when somebody comes in and evades, God's going to say, that's me doing that. But how is he doing that? I think it's just him removing himself from them.

And God says, when I remove myself, watch how quick this goes down once I stop it from going down. Yeah, it's kind of, oh, you want to worship all these other gods? All right, well, we'll see what kind of protection they give you. Yeah, we'll see what kind of protection these gods give you, these ones that you think are so great that you abandoned me in order to worship them. Well, here's what's going to happen. It's like the building inspector comes in, right? That's the language here.

I'm going to get the measuring line of Samaria and the plumb line of the house of Ahab. We're going to check this building. like, oh, looks like it's ready for being condemned. It's got the idea here. And then, of course, the kitchen image of wiping the dish and turning it upside down. Both of those kind of communicate the same thing. They're done, right?

Going to get the bulldozer in, the Assyrian bulldozer, the Babylonian bulldozer, because this place is condemned. I mean, all you got to do is look at the plumb line. It's way off. It's going to fall, you know. So you got to take it down. Yeah, I mean, we're not that far removed from Jesus himself having to show up and kill like 185,000 guys so that Judah could still exist. Yeah, yeah. And if that had not happened, well, then the Assyrians would have taken Jerusalem.

And who knows? I mean, that would have been it. That would have been it for the southern kingdom. So a couple of details here I think that are worthy of talking about. One, it's kind of funny, and we have seen this before, too. He's made Judah also descend with his idols. these are our favorite this is our favorite hebrew word for for idols gilalim these are the the turd deities yeah these are the crap gods uh so that's basically what it means in hebrew ezekiel's favorite word to use for idols the turd deities also uh this is a significant phrase in hebrew it's pretty easy to miss so he has made judah to sin now in in the hebrew there that's what's

called a hyphil which is usually kind of explained as a causative form of the verb to sin so to not descend but to cause to sin now the reason that's important is we've actually seen this hyphil form of the verb to sin to so to make to sin about 19 times throughout the history of kings but up to this point, the only one of whom this verb has been used to make a community or make a nation to sin is Jeroboam, that most mentioned sinner in the Bible. So this is the first time that it's used in reference to somebody besides Jeroboam. And here it's used in reference then to Manasseh. So Manasseh has Jeroboam. He's taken over this same kind of causing to sin by introducing these these dung deities and also there's mention of they did more evil than the amorites did who were

before him about takes us way back to genesis chapter 15 when god tells abraham that his descendants are going to go into egypt and they're going to be there for a while because the iniquity of the amorites has not yet reached its full state or however that that verse goes so the amorites are mentioned way back in genesis as the kind of the uh the arch sinners of of the promised land so bringing them up uh brings with it all that all that history yeah to say to say that he sinned more than them is quite the statement yeah yeah i mean to to out sin the amorites is just like unthinkable i mean i don't know what kind of modern comparison we can make but you know you kind of out hitler hitler i mean it's just like they're held up as the the arch

sinners uh and yeah to to say you've done worse than the amorites is you can't say anything stronger than stronger than that and uh the the ears of everyone tingling i think when we when i hear tingle i don't really think of that as like a bad bad my ears yeah my ears tingling i i don't know what maybe quiver is a better uh better rendering of the the verb that's used here every time this expression is used that uh someone's ears will salal in hebrew uh it's it's bad so you don't want your ears to to to quiver or to tingle because what's being what's being communicated is you your ears are reacting to terrible news such as the destruction of shiloh or something like that yeah when i hear when i read that i don't know if this is how you're

supposed to take it but this is how i read that like um the you know if something like super you know something terrible happens uh people begin talking about it right and so like all of a sudden there's whispering going on and uh oh my gosh did you hear about uh whatever it was and that's sort of what uh what i think of is that something something's going to happen that all kinds of people are going to be telling other people and they're going to and the reason they're going to tell them about it is because uh it's so horrifying they can't not share it yeah yeah that's definitely what is being communicated here like the everybody hears about this it's not going to be and not going to be good news at all yeah it's the worst news and so um anyway uh picking

up we can finish him out here in these next uh next few minutes moreover manasseh shed so in In addition to everything else he did, Manasseh also shed very much innocent blood till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another. Besides the sin that he made Judah to sin, that's the same verb as before, so that they did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. There's a chance here that what's being referred to is, at least if we can trust tradition here, with the shedding of innocent blood is also the killing of Isaiah.

so isaiah traditionally was uh was martyred under under manasseh uh you can read uh some sometime if you're interested look up the uh there's there's a work a jewish work called the the martyrdom and ascension of isaiah uh and it's it describes it just a traditional uh understanding what happened but basically it talks about the the martyrdom isaiah he's the one who uh by tradition was sought into yeah so that's referred to in the book of hebrews as well hebrews 11 37 so could have been this this innocent blood included that of of isaiah now wrapping it up here verse 17 now the rest of the acts of manasseh and all that he did and the sin that he'd committed written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of judah and manasseh slept with his fathers was

buried in the garden of his house, in the garden of Uzzah. And Amon, or Amon, his son, reigned in his place. Now, there's actually a pretty significant difference here between Kings and Chronicles, because one of the things that Kings leaves out that Chronicles does include is that, and we'll get there eventually, but you can check it on your own. So Chronicles includes that at the toward the end uh after he was uh after he suffered greatly that manasseh actually prayed a prayer of repentance and uh because of that because of his he is humbled and and repented that god actually restored him and i love that story because well you've just heard everything we said about manasseh just what what a terrible person he was and yet what what did he do well at

the end he uh he realized uh what he'd done and he confessed this he prayed to god and god actually did hear did hear his prayer and reacted to that prayer with mercy so uh just uh uh that that light of mercy shines out at least in chronicles at the very end of manasseh's life yeah and it is interesting that you know these last verses of his life are this is not we've gotten really used to this phrasing of, now the rest of the acts of this person, are they not written in the Book of Chronicles? He gets this added thing,

the rest of the acts and all that he did and the sin that he committed. You don't get that with every single guy. Even though most of these guys are pretty bad sinners, this one is a little bit different. It's all he did. And what did he do? Well, it was mostly sin.

That's what he did. And so you have that. here but then in chronicles uh so what do you do with the guy that's uh such a renowned sinner that he gets a an extra add-on uh to the the common ending of every person's life but god can still forgive even all that sin yeah yeah i mean it's it's it's it's it the bible's one of the bible's greatest examples of that uh the fact that you know it doesn't matter how how far down that dark rose somebody goes it doesn't mean that the lord cannot bring them back and uh and hear their prayers and forgive forgive their sins just like he did manasseh yeah well all right well that is

it we are out of time we'll get a little bit about uh manasseh's son and then uh we got someone really good coming up i'm sure we'll get to him next week we're gonna get uh another another top five king coming in yeah good old josiah yeah so uh so that will be uh that'll be good so i will see you then chad all right we'll see you then