Study Desk

With him is only an arm of flesh, but with us is the LORD our God to help us and to fight our battles." So the people were strengthened by the words of Hezekiah king of Judah.

Is not Hezekiah misleading you to give you over to death by famine and thirst when he says, 'The LORD our God will deliver us from the hand of the king of Assyria?'

Who among all the gods of these nations that my fathers devoted to destruction has been able to deliver his people from my hand? How then can your God deliver you from my hand?

So now, do not let Hezekiah deceive you, and do not let him mislead you like this. Do not believe him, for no god of any nation or kingdom has been able to deliver his people from my hand or from the hand of my fathers. How much less will your God deliver you from my hand!'"

And the servants of Sennacherib spoke further against the LORD God and against His servant Hezekiah.

He also wrote letters mocking the LORD, the God of Israel, and saying against Him: "Just as the gods of the nations did not deliver their people from my hand, so the God of Hezekiah will not deliver His people from my hand."

They spoke against the God of Jerusalem as they had spoken against the gods of the peoples of the earth-the work of human hands.

and the LORD sent an angel who annihilated every mighty warrior, leader, and commander in the camp of the king of Assyria. So he withdrew to his own land in disgrace. And when he entered the temple of his god, some of his own sons struck him down with the sword.

He made cities for himself, and he acquired herds of sheep and cattle in abundance, for God gave him very great wealth.

And so when ambassadors of the rulers of Babylon were sent to him to inquire about the wonder that had happened in the land, God left him alone to test him, that He might know all that was in Hezekiah's heart.

Manasseh even took the carved image he had made and set it up in the house of God, of which God had said to David and his son Solomon, "In this temple and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, I will establish My Name forever.

And in his distress, Manasseh sought the favor of the LORD his God and earnestly humbled himself before the God of his fathers.

And when he prayed to Him, the LORD received his plea and heard his petition; so He brought him back to Jerusalem and to his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the LORD is God.

Then he restored the altar of the LORD and sacrificed peace offerings and thank offerings on it, and he told Judah to serve the LORD, the God of Israel.

Nevertheless, the people still sacrificed at the high places, but only to the LORD their God.

As for the rest of the acts of Manasseh, along with his prayer to his God and the words of the seers who spoke to him in the name of the LORD, the God of Israel, they are indeed written in the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel.

His prayer and how God received his plea, as well as all his sin and unfaithfulness, and the sites where he built high places and set up Asherah poles and idols before he humbled himself, they are indeed written in the Records of the Seers.

In the eighth year of his reign, while he was still young, Josiah began to seek the God of his father David, and in the twelfth year he began to cleanse Judah and Jerusalem of the high places, the Asherah poles, the carved idols, and the cast images.

Now in the eighteenth year of his reign, in order to cleanse the land and the temple, Josiah sent Shaphan son of Azaliah, Maaseiah the governor of the city, and Joah son of Joahaz, the recorder, to repair the temple of the LORD his God.

So they went to Hilkiah the high priest and gave him the money that had been brought into the house of God, which the Levites at the doors had collected from the people of Manasseh and Ephraim, from all the remnant of Israel, Judah, and Benjamin, and from the people of Jerusalem.