2 Chronicles33chapter 33

Fifty-five years is the longest reign in Judah's history, and the writer lists what filled it: high places rebuilt, altars for the Baals, altars for all the host of heaven set up in both courts of the temple, children burned in the Valley of Hinnom, sorcery, divination, mediums, and a carved image installed in the house of God itself. The host of heaven — sun, moon, stars, and planets — was the central object of Assyrian state religion, and a vassal king had every political reason to import it.

His arrest is described in terms that match Assyrian practice exactly: the captains of the Assyrian army took him with hooks and bound him with bronze fetters and carried him to Babylon. Assyrian reliefs show prisoners led by a ring through the nose or lip, and the wording here is that specific.

The event was long doubted because Kings does not mention it, and it is worth naming that dispute plainly along with what has since been found. Assyrian records list Manasseh of Judah among the vassal kings paying tribute to Esarhaddon and to Ashurbanipal. And the odd detail of being taken to Babylon rather than Nineveh fits precisely one window in that century: after crushing a revolt there, Ashurbanipal held court in Babylon and summoned his vassals to it.

His repentance is recorded without hedging — he humbled himself greatly, prayed, and was brought back to Jerusalem — and the proof of it is practical. He built an outer wall for the city of David west of the Gihon spring and around the Ophel, raising it to a great height, and put commanders in all the fortified towns; then he removed the foreign gods and the image from the house of the LORD and threw the altars out of the city.

The chapter is honest that the repair was partial: the people still sacrificed in the high places, though now to the LORD their God. And Amon, his son, repeated the sins without the repentance and was murdered by his own servants after two years.