MANASSEH, Sylvester Hassell Manasseh, the son of Hezekiah, succeeded his father, and was crowned at the age of twelve years. Those who ruled him were sons of Belial, and plunged him into the commission of almost every crime. If the exact opposite of every good thing his father did was set down to his account it would reveal in part, but not in whole, the carnal and Satanic course of Manasseh. “He shed innocent blood very much, till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another;” and finally succeeded in seducing and carrying the people along with him “to do more evils than did the nations whom the Lord destroyed before the children of Israel!” He reigned fifty-five years. But in the twentieth year of his wicked career he was taken captive by Esar-Haddon, the king of Assyria, and carried in chains to Babylon, then his capital. Manasseh was humbled by the Spirit of God, repented, and begged for mercy, and the Lord pardoned his sins and restored him to his kingdom again. He might have quoted Paul’s experience, wherein he says, “That in me, the chiefest of sinners, Jesus Christ might show forth all long-suffering for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on him to life everlasting” (I Tim. 1:15,16). He devoted the remainder of his life to the service of God, and exhorted all the people to be zealous of the law.
Amon succeeded Manasseh, and imitated his father’s idolatry; but his life was suddenly terminated, in two years, by his assassination, in his palace, by conspirators, and he thus gave way to Josiah, the last of the pious kings of Judah. (Hassell’s History ppg 130, 131)