who took him captive ‘with hooks and bound him with fetters of bronze and brought him to Babylon.’ There, Manasseh prayed to the Lord and was subsequently returned to his former position (2 Chron. 33:10–13). That Manasseh was suspected of disloyalty at least once during his long reign is very likely and this episode may be related to the unrest in the west in 671 B.C. at the end of Esarhaddon’s rule in Assyria. (Some scholars think that Manasseh was implicated in the rebellion against Assyria of
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