Study Desk

And he put the image he had made in the house of God, the house of which God had said to David and to Solomon his son, In this house, and in Jerusalem, the town which I have made mine out of all the tribes of Israel, will I put my name for ever:

And the word of the Lord came to Manasseh and his people, but they gave no attention.

And crying out to the Lord his God in his trouble, he made himself low before the God of his fathers,

And made prayer to him; and in answer to his prayer God let him come back to Jerusalem and to his kingdom. Then Manasseh was certain that the Lord was God.

Now the rest of the acts of Manasseh, and his prayer to his God, and the words which the seers said to him in the name of the Lord, the God of Israel, are recorded among the acts of the kings of Israel.

And the prayer which he made to God, and how God gave him an answer, and all his sin and his wrongdoing, and the places where he made high places and put up pillars of wood and images, before he put away his pride, are recorded in the history of the seers.

So Manasseh went to rest with his fathers, and they put his body to rest in his house, and Amon his son became king in his place.

He did evil in the eyes of the Lord, as Manasseh his father had done; and Amon made offerings to all the images which his father Manasseh had made, and was their servant.

He did not make himself low before the Lord, as his father Manasseh had done, but went on sinning more and more.

And his servants made a secret design against him, and put him to death in his house.

But the people of the land put to death all those who had taken part in the design against King Amon, and made his son Josiah king in his place.

And he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, walking in the ways of his father David, without turning to the right hand or to the left.

In the eighth year of his rule, while he was still young, his heart was first turned to the God of his father David; and in the twelfth year he undertook the clearing away of all the high places and the pillars and the images of wood and metal from Judah and Jerusalem.

Now in the eighteenth year of his rule, when the land and the house had been made clean, he sent Shaphan, the son of Azaliah, and Maaseiah, the ruler of the town, and Joah, the son of Joahaz, the recorder, to make good what was damaged in the house of the Lord his God.

And the king, hearing the words of the law, took his robe in his hands, violently parting it as a sign of his grief.

And your heart was soft, and you made yourself low before God, on hearing his words about this place and its people, and with weeping and signs of grief have made yourself low before me, I have given ear to you, says the Lord God.

And the king went up to the house of the Lord, with all the men of Judah and the people of Jerusalem, and the priests and the Levites and all the people, small and great; and they were present at his reading of the book of the law which had come to light in the house of the Lord.

Then the king, taking his place by the pillar, made an agreement before the Lord, to go in the way of the Lord, and to keep his orders and his decisions and his rules with all his heart and with all his soul, and to keep the words of the agreement recorded in this book.

And he said to the Levites, the teachers of all Israel, who were holy to the Lord, See, the holy ark is in the house which Solomon, the son of David, king of Israel, made; it will no longer have to be transported on your backs: now be the servants of the Lord your God and his people Israel,

And make yourselves ready in your divisions, by your families, as it is ordered in the writings of David, king of Israel, and of Solomon his son;