¹¹So the Lord let the commanders of the Assyrian army invade Judah. They captured Manasseh, stuck hooks in him, put him in chains, and took him to Babylon. ¹²In his suffering he became humble, turned to the Lord his God, and begged him for help. ¹³God accepted Manasseh’s prayer and answered it by letting him go back to Jerusalem and rule again. This convinced Manasseh that the Lord was God.

¹⁴After this, Manasseh increased the height of the outer wall on the east side of David’s City, from a point in the valley near the spring of Gihon north to the Fish Gate and the area of the city called Ophel. He also stationed an army officer in command of a unit of troops in each of the fortified cities of Judah. ¹⁵He removed from the Temple the foreign gods and the image that he had placed there, and the pagan altars that were on the hill where the Temple stood and in other places in Jerusalem; he took all these things outside the city and threw them away. ¹⁶He also repaired the altar where the Lord was worshipped, and he sacrificed fellowship offerings and thanksgiving offerings on it. He commanded all the people of Judah to worship the Lord, the God of Israel. ¹⁷Although the people continued to offer sacrifices at other places of worship, they offered them only to the Lord.

The End of Manasseh’s Reign

¹⁸Everything else that Manasseh did, the prayer he made to his God, and the messages of the prophets who spoke to him in the name of the Lord, the God of Israel, are all recorded in The History of the Kings of Israel. ¹⁹The king’s prayer and God’s answer to it, and an account of the sins he committed before he repented—the evil he did, the pagan places of worship and the symbols of the goddess Asherah that he made and the idols that he worshipped—are all recorded in The History of the Prophets.

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