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Prophets and Kings
spoil to all their enemies.”
2 Kings 21:11, 14
. But the Lord would not
utterly forsake those who in a strange land should acknowledge Him
as their Ruler; they might suffer great tribulation, yet He would bring
deliverance to them in His appointed time and way. Those who should
put their trust wholly in Him would find a sure refuge.
Faithfully the prophets continued their warnings and their exhor-
tations; fearlessly they spoke to Manasseh and to his people; but the
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messages were scorned; backsliding Judah would not heed. As an
earnest of what would befall the people should they continue impeni-
tent, the Lord permitted their king to be captured by a band of Assyrian
soldiers, who “bound him with fetters, and carried him to Babylon,”
their temporary capital. This affliction brought the king to his senses;
“he besought the Lord his God, and humbled himself greatly before
the God of his fathers, and prayed unto Him: and He was entreated of
him, and heard his supplication, and brought him again to Jerusalem
into his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord He was God.”
2
Chronicles 33:11-13
. But this repentance, remarkable though it was,
came too late to save the kingdom from the corrupting influence of
years of idolatrous practices. Many had stumbled and fallen, never
again to rise.
Among those whose life experience had been shaped beyond recall
by the fatal apostasy of Manasseh, was his own son, who came to the
throne at the age of twenty-two. Of King Amon it is written: “He
walked in all the way that his father walked in, and served the idols
that his father served, and worshiped them: and he forsook the Lord
God of his fathers” (
2 Kings 21:21, 22
); he “humbled not himself
before the Lord, as Manasseh his father had humbled himself; but
Amon trespassed more and more.” The wicked king was not permitted
to reign long. In the midst of his daring impiety, only two years from
the time he ascended the throne, he was slain in the palace by his own
servants; and “the people of the land made Josiah his son king in his
stead.”
2 Chronicles 33:23, 25
.
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With the accession of Josiah to the throne, where he was to rule
for thirty-one years, those who had maintained the purity of their faith
began to hope that the downward course of the kingdom was checked;
for the new king, though only eight years old, feared God, and from
the very beginning “he did that which was right in the sight of the
Lord, and walked in all the way of David his father, and turned not