"Manasseh was twelve years old when he began to reign, and he reigned
fifty and five years in Jerusalem."--2 CHRON. xxxiii. l.
Fifty and five years--he wore the crown a longer time than any other of
the house of David. Of all the kings that reigned in Jerusalem, this
man's reign filled the largest space; yet he is the one king of Judah
about whom we are told least. In the modern city of Venice there is a
hall which is adorned with the portraits of all the doges or kings who
ruled that city in the days of its splendour--all except one--one who
made himself infamous by evil deeds. Where his portrait ought to be,
there is a black blank space which says nothing, yet speaks volumes;
which says to every visitor, Do not think of him, let him be forgotten.
In some such way Manasseh is disposed of by the sacred writers. They
hurry over the fifty-five years; they crowd them into half a chapter,
as if they were ashamed to dwell upon them, as if they wanted the
memory of them and of the man to be forgotten. And that was the
feeling of all the Jews. Century after century, and even to the
present time, Jews have held the man's name in abhorrence. Do not
speak of him, they say. He was the curse of our nation. He denied our
faith. He slew our prophets. He brought Jerusalem to ruin.
Yet, strange to say, the man so hated and cursed was once a nation's
hope and joy. When his father, Hezekiah, lay sick unto death, his
greatest grief and the profoundest sorrow of his people was caused by
the thought that he was dying childless. They prayed for his recovery
mainly on that ground. He recovered, and married, and a child was
born, and the glad father called him Manasseh, which means, God hath
made me forget--forget my sickness and my sorrow; and all over the land
the ringing of bells was heard and shouts of rejoicing, and the prophet
Isaiah sang of the child's birth in those triumphant words which we
have often heard since in another connection, "_Unto us a son is born,
unto us a child is given_"; and they thought that all would go well now
that there was an heir to the throne, and they prayed that he might be
sturdy and strong, and get over all the ailments of childhood. They
hoped more from the child than they did from God. Their prayers were
granted. God gave them their desire, and the result was such as to
make us doubtful whether we are always wise in pressing such prayers.
We are never sure that it will be good for us, or good for our darling
child, that its life should be spared and prolonged in some time of
crisis. Often the early death which we dread may be far less cruel
than the evil which waits beyond. Better to leave these things in
God's hands, and say that will be best for all which seems right to
Thee. A whole nation prayed for the birth and preservation of this
son. That same nation came to curse the day on which he was born.
Strange that a father like Hezekiah had a child like this. Hezekiah
was, I think, the best of the Jewish kings, wise and brave, gentle and
strong, full of reverence and faith, pre-eminently a man who walked
with God and strengthened himself by prayer, and fought as earnest and
true a battle for religion and righteousness as we have recorded in the
Old Testament. How came it that the son was in all respects his
opposite? Did an evil mother shape him, or what? We cannot tell.
These are among the saddest mysteries of human life. The law that a
child's training and environment determine the character of the man,
often fails most deplorably. The wisest man may have a most foolish
son; the godliest home may send forth a reprobate; the child of many
prayers may live a life of shame. When a young man goes wrong, it is
often both unjust and cruel to lay it on the home training, and to say
that there has been neglect or want of discipline, or want of right
example there. It is adding another burden to hearts already weighted
with intolerable grief.
For the most part, children will follow their parents in what is good,
and those nursed in prayer will grow up praying men. But there are
hideous exceptions, and sometimes the most Christlike people have this
cross to bear; and it is the most heart-crushing of all to see children
turning aside from all that they have held dear, and by the whole
course of their lives mocking the religious ideals and hopes which were
cherished for them. God save all you fathers and mothers from this
calamity, and God save all our young people from crushing tender hopes
in this cruel way.
Manasseh's life was spent in undoing what his father had done. It
seemed to be his great ambition to overturn and destroy the sacred
edifice which his father's hands, with untiring prayer and devotion,
had raised. Hezekiah had taught his people to trust in God, and in
reliance on His help to sustain a noble independence separate from
heathen alliances. Manasseh hastened to join hands with Babylon, and
make his nation the vassal of a great heathen empire. Hezekiah had
swept the land clean of idols. Manasseh filled every grove and
hillside with these vain images again. Hezekiah had restored the
Temple worship and the Mosaic ritual, and the moral law, and laboured
to establish a reign of sobriety, purity, justice, and order. Manasseh
outraged all the moralities, and delighted in introducing everywhere
the licentious abominations of the neighbouring peoples. Hezekiah had
cultivated and encouraged prophecy, and gathered about him great and
noble souls like Isaiah and Habakkuk. Manasseh drove them from his
presence, and finally slew them.
There were new lights in those days, as there are now. Men who sneered
at all the old thoughts and ways, who swept Moses aside with disdain,
and thought that David's psalms were poor and feeble things, and that
the old-fashioned religion was narrow and provincial, and that the
stories of victories won by faith and miracles wrought by prayer were
worn-out fictions. They said that if the nation would prosper, it must
turn its back on all this stuff, and follow new methods, and profess a
new religion. Let them make the great empire, Babylon, their model,
with its advanced civilisation, and science, and literature, and vast
stores of wealth, with its worship, too, of the sun, and stars, and
fire, its religion full of jollity and license, which contrasted so
happily with the sober and severe worship of Jehovah, and did not
trouble men with unwelcome moral precepts. See how great that empire
had become, and how stationary and unprogressive was their own little
kingdom, because it clung to the old ways. That was what the new party
said. Away with the old-fashioned thoughts and the old-fashioned
trusts and beliefs and worship. We are wiser than our simple-minded
fathers. We know a few things more than these narrow-minded and crazy
prophets. We will have all things new.
And Manasseh, being a young man and as foolish as he was young, drank
in greedily their counsels and made himself their leader. For it is
ever the temptation of young life to think lightly of their father's
wisdom, and to despise what they call the narrow religious beliefs, and
the careful moral scruples of the old, and to fancy that they know all
things so much better than those who have gone before. They want to
try experiments of their own with life, and shake off the shackles of
old moral laws and religious creeds, and be free to do and think as
they please, and put the Bible away on the shelf, and shove prayer
aside as a sort of worn-out heirloom, and have a merrier and better
time than the old folks knew. That was the course which Manasseh took,
just as headstrong and irreverent youths take it now.
Then followed that time which the Jewish people never speak of without
shame--a hideous reign of idolatry, and immorality, and injustice; an
awful period of persecution for the few righteous and God-fearing
people who were left when the prophets had been sought out and slain.
Isaiah sawn asunder, Habakkuk stoned to death, the faithful driven into
dens and caves of earth. It is of this time that we read in the
Epistle to the Hebrews, in that graphic account of the martyred
faithful: "_They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted,
were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and
goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented: of whom the world was
not worthy_" (xi. 37, 38). A few years of this sufficed to pull down
the whole fabric of religion which Hezekiah had so painfully and
patiently raised. For it is so easy to destroy; so easy for folly and
irreverence to pull down what wisdom and goodness have taken years in
building; so easy for a vicious and irreligious son to bring shame and
ruin upon the house which a godly father and mother have spent a
lifetime in rearing with honour; so easy, by a few rash acts, to
destroy the character and reputation which the prayers and training of
years have sought to establish. It is the easiest thing in the world
to undo and overturn; there is no cleverness and courage required for
destroying, the cleverness and courage are called for in building it up.
Manasseh succeeded to his heart's content. People followed him
greedily, except the steadfast few. And presently the prophets were
all gone, and the worship of the true God was nowhere practised except
in secret, and the sacred names were no more mentioned, and the land
gave itself up to all the foul rites and the shameful indulgences of
the heathen world, And then God's retribution came swiftly. Where the
rotting carcase was, there the eagles gathered together. These same
Babylonians whose ways the renegade Jews had so much admired and
imitated, swept down upon them with the talons of a vulture, with
cruelty that spared neither tender woman nor innocent child, and
Jerusalem was burned with fire, and Manasseh carried off in chains and
flung into a foreign prison to muse in solitude over the end of his
projects, and to find out there that the old ways had been the best.
There we are told that he repented, that he was stricken with shame
because of all the evil that he had done, and turned with prayer and
humility to the God whom he had defied. And we are told that God was
merciful and heard his entreaties, and accepted his repentance, and
brought him back after sorrowful years of imprisonment to his land and
throne. This is the part of the story which most people emphasise.
That, they say, is the main lesson of the story--Manasseh's repentance,
and how God accepted the rebellious sinner at the last and forgave him
all his iniquities--and they draw from that the conclusion that it is
never too late to turn to God, and that all the dark doings of a man's
life are swept clean away, if at any time the heart repents and
believes.
But this is not the part of the story which the sacred writers dwell
upon. In the Book of Kings, where there is another version of
Manasseh's doings, no mention is made whatever of the repentance, and
here it is only briefly recorded, and in a somewhat sorrowful tone.
He came back humbled and forgiven, indeed, but not in a happy state of
mind. He came back to a ruined kingdom; to a sinful and demoralised
and destitute people; to see everywhere the sorrow, and the evil and
the misery and shame which his doings had caused; to be reminded
continually that his life had been a great wicked and foolish blunder,
and that there was no undoing the mischief which he had done. For the
sake of his repentance he was spared a little longer, but there could
be little joy in the remaining years of a life like that.
I think that that is the experience of most men who turn away in their
youth from the example and precepts of godly fathers, who reject the
truths which make life sober and strong, who betake themselves to
thoughts of infidelity and ways of sin, and fancy that they can live
life happily without God and prayer. There comes a time when they are
made to feel that their life has been a mistake, that it would have
been far better for them to have stuck to the old ways, that those
believing fathers whom they laughed at were right after all; perhaps
they repent and go back to God at last, and He accepts them; but
whether repentant or not, they always carry with them an awful burden.
Shame is upon them for the evil they have done, shame for the life that
has been spent to so little purpose, regret and humbling that they
cannot undo the blind and guilty past. Repentance at the best is a
poor business when it comes in the evening hours of life. Better then
than never; but better far to have gone with God from the beginning.
That, I think, is the lesson which the wise man will find in the story
of the evil king.