Study Desk

Doth not Hezekiah persuade you to give over yourselves to die by famine and by thirst, saying, The LORD our God will deliver us out of the hand of the king of Assyria?

Who [was there] among all the gods of those nations that my fathers utterly destroyed, that could deliver his people out of my hand, that your God should be able to deliver you out of my hand?

Now therefore let not Hezekiah deceive you, nor persuade you in this manner, neither yet believe him: for no god of any nation or kingdom hath been able to deliver his people out of my hand, and out of the hand of my fathers: how much less shall your God deliver you out of my hand?

And his servants spoke yet [more] against the LORD God, and against his servant Hezekiah.

He wrote also letters to rail at the LORD God of Israel, and to speak against him, saying, As the gods of the nations of [other] lands have not delivered their people out of my hand, so shall not the God of Hezekiah deliver his people out of my hand.

And they spoke against the God of Jerusalem, as against the gods of the people of the earth, the work of the hands of man.

And the LORD sent an angel, who cut off all the mighty men of valor, and the leaders and captains in the camp of the king of Assyria. So he returned with shame of face to his own land. And when he had come into the house of his god, they that came forth from his own bowels slew him there with the sword.

Moreover, he provided for himself cities, and possessions of flocks and herds in abundance: for God had given him substance in great abundance.

But, in [the business of] the embassadors of the princes of Babylon, who sent to him to inquire of the wonder that was [done] in the land, God left him, to try him, that he might know all [that was] in his heart.

And he set a carved image, the idol which he had made, in the house of God, of which God had said to David and to Solomon his son, In this house, and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen before all the tribes of Israel, will I put my name for ever:

And when he was in affliction, he besought the LORD his God, and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers,

And prayed to him: and he was entreated by him, and heard his supplication, and brought him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the LORD he [is] God.

And he repaired the altar of the LORD, and sacrificed on it peace-offerings and thank-offerings, and commanded Judah to serve the LORD God of Israel.

Nevertheless, the people sacrificed still in the high places, [yet] to the LORD their God only.

Now the rest of the acts of Manasseh, and his prayer to his God, and the words of the seers that spoke to him in the name of the LORD God of Israel, behold, they [are written] in the book of the kings of Israel.

His prayer also, and [how God] was entreated by him, and all his sin, and his trespass, and the places in which he built high places, and set up groves and graven images, before he was humbled: behold, they [are] written among the sayings of the seers.

For in the eighth year of his reign, while he was yet young, he began to seek after the God of David his father: and in the twelfth year he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem from the high places, and the groves, and the carved images, and the molten images.

Now in the eighteenth year of his reign, when he had purged the land, and the house, he sent Shaphan the son of Azaliah, and Maaseiah the governor of the city, and Joah the son of Joahaz the recorder, to repair the house of the LORD his God.

And when they came to Hilkiah the high priest, they delivered the money that was brought into the house of God, which the Levites that kept the doors had collected from the hand of Manasseh and Ephraim, and from all the remnant of Israel, and from all Judah and Benjamin; and they returned to Jerusalem.

And she answered them, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Tell ye the man that sent you to me.