Study Desk

Which of their gods was able to rescue its people from the destructive power of my predecessors? What makes you think your God can rescue you from me?

Don't let Hezekiah deceive you! Don't let him fool you like this! I say it again—no god of any nation or kingdom has ever yet been able to rescue his people from me or my ancestors. How much less will your God rescue you from my power!"

And Sennacherib's officers further mocked the Lord God and his servant Hezekiah, heaping insult upon insult.

The king also sent letters scorning the Lord , the God of Israel. He wrote, "Just as the gods of all the other nations failed to rescue their people from my power, so the God of Hezekiah will also fail."

These officers talked about the God of Jerusalem as though he were one of the pagan gods, made by human hands.

Then King Hezekiah and the prophet Isaiah son of Amoz cried out in prayer to God in heaven.

And the Lord sent an angel who destroyed the Assyrian army with all its commanders and officers. So Sennacherib was forced to return home in disgrace to his own land. And when he entered the temple of his god, some of his own sons killed him there with a sword.

He built many towns and acquired vast flocks and herds, for God had given him great wealth.

However, when ambassadors arrived from Babylon to ask about the remarkable events that had taken place in the land, God withdrew from Hezekiah in order to test him and to see what was really in his heart.

Manasseh even took a carved idol he had made and set it up in God's Temple, the very place where God had told David and his son Solomon: "My name will be honored forever in this Temple and in Jerusalem—the city I have chosen from among all the tribes of Israel.

But while in deep distress, Manasseh sought the Lord his God and sincerely humbled himself before the God of his ancestors.

And when he prayed, the Lord listened to him and was moved by his request. So the Lord brought Manasseh back to Jerusalem and to his kingdom. Then Manasseh finally realized that the Lord alone is God!

Then he restored the altar of the Lord and sacrificed peace offerings and thanksgiving offerings on it. He also encouraged the people of Judah to worship the Lord , the God of Israel.

However, the people still sacrificed at the pagan shrines, though only to the Lord their God.

The rest of the events of Manasseh's reign, his prayer to God, and the words the seers spoke to him in the name of the Lord , the God of Israel, are recorded in The Book of the Kings of Israel.

Manasseh's prayer, the account of the way God answered him, and an account of all his sins and unfaithfulness are recorded in The Record of the Seers. It includes a list of the locations where he built pagan shrines and set up Asherah poles and idols before he humbled himself and repented.

During the eighth year of his reign, while he was still young, Josiah began to seek the God of his ancestor David. Then in the twelfth year he began to purify Judah and Jerusalem, destroying all the pagan shrines, the Asherah poles, and the carved idols and cast images.

In the eighteenth year of his reign, after he had purified the land and the Temple, Josiah appointed Shaphan son of Azaliah, Maaseiah the governor of Jerusalem, and Joah son of Joahaz, the royal historian, to repair the Temple of the Lord his God.

They gave Hilkiah the high priest the money that had been collected by the Levites who served as gatekeepers at the Temple of God. The gifts were brought by people from Manasseh, Ephraim, and from all the remnant of Israel, as well as from all Judah, Benjamin, and the people of Jerusalem.

She said to them, "The Lord , the God of Israel, has spoken! Go back and tell the man who sent you,