Today, I am reading and commenting on 2 Chronicles 31-33.

While Hezekiah was not perfect, he was a good king who did what was right in the eyes of the Lord most of the time.  However, his son Manasseh was a mostly evil king.  He rebuilt the high places which Hezekiah had destroyed, he built altars to Baal and erected Asherah poles, he bowed down and worshipped “the starry hosts”*.  He even built altars to other gods in the temple and put an idol there as well.  Not only did he worship these other gods, he sacrificed his own children to them.  All of this led to him being taken captive as a prisoner of the Assyrians.  While captive to the Assyrians, Manasseh cried out to God and God delivered him.  When he returned to Jerusalem, he removed the altars and idols he had erected in Jerusalem and consecrated the temple once more.  For the rest of his life he worshiped only the Lord, and called upon the people of Judah to do likewise.  And, while the people continued to sacrifice and worship at the high places Manasseh had built before he turned to the Lord, they worshiped only the Lord at those places after Manasseh’s reform.  Manasseh had been as evil as one could imagine, but after he turned to God, he led others to do likewise.  Let us remember that people today can do the same.  If those suffering the consequences of their sin turn to the Lord and cry out to Him, He will deliver them, and they (and we should consider whether or not we have failed to serve Him and need to turn back to Him) can become great witnesses to others.

**the way that “the starry hosts” is used in the Old Testament suggests to me that it was a group of gods that were always worshipped collectively and associated with the stars.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.