MANASSEH AND JOSIAH.



WHEN Hezekiah died, he left a son twelve years old. This son's name was Manasseh, and he reigned fifty-five years in Jerusalem. He did all the wicked things that Ahaz had done, and besides, he carved an image and set it up in the house of God to be worshiped. "So Manasseh made Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to err, and to do worse than the heathen, whom the Lord had destroyed before the children of Israel.

"And the Lord spake to Manasseh, and to his people; but they would not hearken. Wherefore the Lord brought upon them the captains of the host of the king of Assyria, which took Manasseh among the thorns, and bound him with fetters, and carried him to Babylon. And when he was in affliction, 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."

After this, Manasseh seems to have been a good king. He broke down the altars, and destroyed the images which he had set up, and spent the remainder of his life in good works. 

After his death his son Amon reigned in his stead; but did very wickedly, following the example of the early part of his father's reign. So after he had reigned two years, his servants conspired against him and slew him in his own house.

Then the people took his son Josiah, who was then only eight years old, and made him king. Josiah did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, and walked in the ways of David his father, and declined neither to the right hand nor to the left."

When he was sixteen years old, he began to seek the Lord; and when he was twenty, he began to purge the land from idolatry. ''And they brake down the altars of Baalim in his presence; and the images that were on high above them, he cut down; and the groves, and the carved images, and the molten images, he brake in pieces, and made dust of them, and strewed it upon the graves of them that had sacrificed unto them. And he burnt the bones of the priests upon their altars, and cleansed Judah and Jerusalem. And so did he in the cities of Manasseh, and Ephraim, and Simeon, even unto Naphtali."

When he had finished all this work, he set about repairing the temple. Now as the workmen were engaged upon the temple, there was found a book of the law, written by Moses. 

When this book was read before Josiah, he was greatly distressed; for it told just what evils would come upon the people if they should ever do just as they had been doing before he began to reign. He then inquired of the Lord by Huldah the prophetess, and was told that all the curses written in the law would surely come upon the Jewish nation, but not in his day.  Josiah reigned thirty-one years, and then his son Jehoahaz reigned in his stead.