Judgment and Grace. 2 Kings 21:1-26; 2
Chron. 33
In post-Enlightenment western
civilization, our culture—by that is not meant the Christian aspect of the culture
but the rationalistic aspect of our culture that comes out of the
Enlightenment—focuses on the natural as the only realm of human knowledge and
perception, that everything within the natural realm, everything within what
Immanuel Kant described as the phenomenal—what we see, what we perceive—is
reality, and nothing beyond that in terms of modern thought is real or actually
exists, is that which we can measure, that which we can quantify, that which we
can observe. Rationalism in this sense, in the sense of a philosophy of life, a
worldview that is built upon that which is directly observable through the
human senses in terms of empiricism, and that which is deductive from that in
terms of the autonomous use of human reason; only that is what makes up
reality. So when we go to university, go to various other workshops, and we
read histories and biographies from a secular viewpoint, what they emphasize is
anything related to causation or why things happen the way they do; they
exclude completely the spiritual realm. So that these analyses are all based
upon various models of behavior, whether it is economic behavior, social
behavior, political behavior, military action, these models are somewhat
limited because from the very outside presuppositionally these writers, these
scholars come to the data excluding God and excluding the impact of spiritual
reality from having any genuine causative influence on the trends of history.
Not only is God excluded but we also see in this that the existence of angels, demons
or Satan himself as the arch enemy of God, as the devil who led a rebellion
among the angels against God in eternity past, that the existence and
activities of angels and demons have nothing whatsoever to do with every-day
events, nothing to do with the movements of history, nothing to do with wars,
with the rise of human powers and authorities, and with the trends of politics.
Somehow all of that gets excluded because in a secularist mindset the only
thing that has real meaning, has quantifiable and measurable value, is that
which is observable and measurable. Anything else is just subjectivity.
Ever since Immanuel Kant, a
famous German philosopher at the end of the eighteenth century, western
civilization has redefined how we know truth, and we don’t know truth
objectively, we only know it subjectively; we only know our impressions of what
happened. So religion is a result of Kantian influence on thought. Religion
began to be thought of not as something that expresses and external objective
reality, of God who rules in the affairs of men, a God who in human history is
part of an overall invisible war or conflict among the angels; that was all
rejected so that God, angels and demons are just subjective psychological or
emotional facets of our makeup, and things that we try to in some sort of
superstitious manner to explain things.
But that is not how the Bible
presents God or the existence of angels or demons. In fact, what the Bible
presents first of all is that there are basically only two ways to look at
life. There is God’s way and there is, for lack of another term, Satan’s way.
Satan’s way we sometimes talk about in terms of human viewpoint, we talk about
it in biblical terms in terms of worldliness, but there are only these two
views. God’s view is that which is embedded within His omniscience, His
righteousness and His justice which provide the ethical element to His
knowledge, and that God’s omniscience is that are of knowledge where God knows
all of the knowable. His knowledge is eternal, is immutable; He knows all
things and has always known all things, and he didn’t learn things, He knew
everything throughout all of eternity immediately, intuitively and
comprehensively. And we can’t even come close to comprehending what that
actually means. He has an absolute knowledge of all things. And His knowledge,
because it is consistent with His righteousness and His justice, is that which
sets the absolute ethical standard for all of history.
When the creature Lucifer,
the highest of all of the angels, rebelled against Him in eternity past what He
did in essence was say, I have a better idea, a better way of thinking about
everything. He is juxtaposing his way of thinking against God’s way of
thinking. So we basically have these two ways of thinking. God’s way of
thinking is more monolithic, whereas in Satan’s way of thinking because of the
nature of creaturely arrogance it basically fragments into a myriad of options
and alternatives so that it is not monolithic. Satan’s way of thinking also has
a level of self-justification that provides its own ethic, its own standard,
its own right and wrong.
There are two characteristics
of Satan’s thinking and everything else falls out from these two elements. One
is arrogance, the self-promotion of the creature: the creature can do it as
well as God; the creature can define reality and define the elements of thought
as well as the creator can; the creature can somehow innovate in the area of
ethics and in knowledge and generate a view of reality that can compete with
God’s view of reality. We know in just thinking about that that it is absurd,
but that is exactly what we all do every day when we start operating on
arrogance. We think that our view of reality can take over and replace God’s
view of reality. We know objectively that that is just nonsense but
nevertheless in arrogance we are blinded, we are self-deceived, and so we do
not see the error of that as we do when we stop and think about it more
objectively.
The first element is arrogance;
the second is antagonism towards God. When the creature starts to operate
autonomously or independently from God then immediately a conflict results, and
because of that conflict the creature in arrogance becomes hostile or
antagonistic to God. When we look at these two characteristics of arrogance and
antagonism, the two primary poles of all satanic thought, then we see the
essence of all the world’s religions other than Christianity and all of the
world’s philosophies; because they all operate in this assumption that man can
define reality without paying attention to what God has said, and that man can
define right and wrong on his own terms apart from what God has said, and that
man can therefore live his life in terms of this alternate universe that he has
created between his ears.
Because Satan’s way of
thinking is built on this creaturely rebellion, this assertion of independence
from God, then all of the world’s religions and philosophies which are based
upon human works all fall out in terms of what the Scripture describes as
“worldliness.” The way the world thinks mirrors and reflects the father of the
world, which is Satan. So that when we are not operating, living on the basis
of the Word of God we are operating in some realm, in some ways, within the
thinking of Satan. Man in the fall with Adam and Eve, as they rebelled against
God, are basically mirroring or reflecting the thinking of Satan in his fall;
it is just the second verse of the same song.
As we see this breakdown we
realize that human history is not operating in a pure physical material
reality, but there is an immaterial reality, an invisible reality related to
the angels and the angelic rebellion against God that has a direct impact on
human history. When we think independently of God we are thinking in the same
way that Satan thinks; that is why we call it satanic thought. A lot of people
may think that is a little too harsh and that they don’t seem to be satanic at
all, and now we have to get into some areas where we have to define terms like
what exactly is good and evil? If most were asked to write down the definition
of evil they would come up with a definition similar to that which is found in
the concise Oxford English dictionary: that which is extremely wicked and immoral.
One aspect of its definition defines it as “that which embodies or is
associated with the forces of the devil.” That is the biblical definition of
what evil is. Evil is not necessarily that which we think of as extreme
violence or implacability or hatred or abuse or any of the social ills or
things that are defined in each generation as social injustice. That is not how
the Bible defines evil.
When we look back to what we
have studied in Kings, going all the way back to Solomon who became involved with
idolatry, and later it was the nation of Israel which was punished by God and
there was the rebellion from the ten tribes in the north and Jeroboam set up
alternate competing worship centers in the north. He set up a competing deity;
he created golden calves to pace in each of the sites and he identified them as
the god who had rescued
These are heavy thoughts for
some, but the reason for emphasizing all this by way of introduction is to help
us understand the nature of evil and its impact under Manasseh. There have been
these trends of evil in the history of both the northern kingdom and the
southern kingdom for the previous 200+ years, back to the time of Solomon’s
defection from God and his orientation to idolatry. Solomon’s idolatry was
followed when the nation divided into the northern kingdom and southern kingdom
and in the northern kingdom there was the worship of the two golden calves
under Jeroboam I, as if we remember as we went through the history of the
northern kingdom from one king to the next the comment that God makes is what?
That so and so did evil and followed in the path of Jeroboam I. So he becomes
the benchmark of evil until we get down to the descendants of Omri, and with
Ahab who married Jezebel the daughter of the king and high priest in
This created a major problem
in the northern kingdom. Eventually it is the reason they are disciplined by
God and defeated by the Assyrian empire and removed from history in 722 BC. In the
southern kingdom there was this ebb and flow of the influence of Ahab and the
worship of the Baals and the Asherah, and we saw that in Hezekiah’s father,
Ahaz. Hezekiah cleans house. He comes in and removes all of the high places,
destroys all of the idols, cleanses the temple, and he returns the nation to an
observance of God and the Torah. But it is instituted from the top down; it is Hezekiah
who has truly turned to God, it is not the heart of the people that turn to
God. So even though they were delivered by God through the miraculous
destruction of the army of Sennacherib outside of
We
are given a divine summary of Manasseh’s reign in 2 Kings 21:1 NASB
“Manasseh was twelve
years old when he became king, and he reigned fifty-five years in
The next
seven verses give us an evaluation of Manasseh’s life. 2 Kings 21:2 NASB
“He did evil in the sight of the LORD, according to the abominations of the nations whom the LORD dispossessed before the sons of
So “He did
evil in the sight of the LORD…” which
doesn’t mean he was a horrible man; it doesn’t emphasize the violence and the
murders and the executions that he did enact later on in his reign. As we see
this word in the Old Testament it simply means he is a traitor to God who
rescued
The
interesting word in this chapter is the word for abominations. It is the Hebrew
word toebah. It is translated
“abomination,” which according to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary means a cause of hatred or disgust, and it is also translated in some
versions “detestable.” Something that is detestable is something which is
deserving of intense dislike. Both of these words are actually what is called
anthropopathisms. Anthropopathism is a figure of speech in which human
emotions, which God does not actually possess, are attribut5ed to Him for the
purpose of communicating by way of analogy some aspect of His purpose, plans or
character. In this case this idea representing the hatred or disgust or intense
dislike represents the complete rejection by God of something. He completely
rejects their opinions, their beliefs, their ideas, their values without any
acceptance whatsoever. It emphasizes His righteous standard and what they are
doing, because it is built on a rejection of Him, is completely incompatible
with His character.
But the word that is used here also takes
us back to understand the historical context and how this relates to God’s
absolutes as laid down in the Mosaic law. In Deuteronomy Moses gives his last
major address/sermon to the Israelites before he goes to be with the Lord and
before they enter into the land. In Deuteronomy 18 he lays out a warning that
God gives the nation before they go into the land.
Deuteronomy
18:9 NASB “When you enter the land which the LORD your God gives you, you shall not learn
to imitate the detestable things of those nations.” What is Manasseh doing? He
is learning to follow the abominations of those nations. [10] “There shall not
be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the
fire…” Manasseh is going to restore that. What this refers to is the worship of
Molech or Chemosh (Two different names of the same deity) where they but these
huge idols of Molech and his arms are outstretched, and between his arms is a
furnace that is built. The fires are lit there and then the individual who is
worshipping Chemosh/Molech will bring their infant child and would put him on
the arms, which means he would be immediately immolated by the fires of Molech,
and it is a living human sacrifice. That is hard for us to imagine but this had
become the norm in the northern
There is a
difference between demonic influence and demon possession. Demon possession is
when an evil spirit or demon takes up residence or controls a person
internally, controls their physical bodily actions, may control other aspects
of their being—what they say, what they do, and may bring illness upon them.
This is demon possession, but it doesn’t obliterate the personality or the
volition of the individual, and the only solution is for that person who is
still there to make a decision to reject demonism and to turn to God. That is
the only thing that can bring about a true casting out of the demon, it is not
based on spells or exorcism or any other kind of mumbo-jumbo that is seen in
some of the world’s religions and in some aspects of Christianity.
Deuteronomy
There are
four different Hebrew words that are used in the context of Deuteronomy chapter
eighteen, as well as in 2 Kings 21 and 2 Chronicles 33. There words are very
close synonyms, so that when we look at the translations often they reverse the
translations. The first word anan
occurs in the pual stem in the Hebrew and it is translated “soothsayer” by the NKJV and “witchcraft” in the NASB. It refers to someone who foretells the
future. The second word, nachash, is
the word “witchcraft” in the NKJV and “divination” in the NASB. Kashaph which is
translated “sorcery” is someone who is believed to have magical powers. These
words are not used that much in Hebrew and they all refer to various kinds of
activity very closely connected, trying to tell the future through contact with
supernatural beings. The last one is the term ob which is translated “mediums.” The Greek translation was engastrimuthos [e)ggastrimuqoj]–gastra
is “gastric” which is where we get our term for the bowels, and muthos is related to the opening of the
mouth, and so it has to do with the casting of a voice like a ventriloquist.
What would happen in the ancient world is someone would go to a medium who
would contact the dead and the dead would not physically appear but it would be
as if their voice was coming forth from the ground, the grave. So the demon
that possessed the medium would be casting their voice like a ventriloquist to
a spot on the ground and then it would sound as if that place in the ground was
speaking this voice from the dead. That is why in the episode where Saul went
to the witch at Endor and wanted her to contact Samuel that instead of a voice
coming from the ground Samuel actually appeared, and it just shocked the witch
at Endor as a medium because she had never had this happen before. That is why
she immediately knew that something bazaar and unusual was happening and she
immediately identified Saul who had been in disguise and realized that God was
at work and she was in trouble.
The reason
this is brought in is because we do live in a universe that has this two-tiered
reality, the reality of the material and the physical and the reality of the
immaterial and the angelic or demonic; and that that realm operates at times in
a causative way on the affairs of mankind—not that it is a way that overrides
human volition but that when human
volition in various cultures are open to the demonic because of their religious
philosophies then there is more of a direct active demonic influence in the
culture. This happens in false religions. In Deuteronomy 32:17 Moses spoke
about this worship of these Canaanite idols and false gods, and the sacrifice
to them, and he says: “They sacrificed to demons who were not God, To gods whom
they have not known, New {gods} who came lately, Whom your fathers did not
dread.” They were actually sacrificing to demons because it is demonic thought
and direct demonic influence that lies behind these false religions. What that
tells us is that we don’t live in a world that is not separated from the
influence of Satan and the demons, that there is this constant influence going
on from the demonic realm; so that when we are not thinking biblically we are
thinking satanically. We may not like to think of it in that way, that is
saying that in its harshest form but it is true. All human viewpoint thinking,
all of our opinions that disagree with the Bible are not just human viewpoint,
it is a satanic viewpoint. And that is going to culminate in things that also
appear to be very moral and ethical. In 2 Corinthians 11, Paul talks about the
fact that Satan and his ministers appear as angels of light. That means that
they appear to be very good. But their origin is not from the Bible. They, in
fact, conflict with biblical ideas and biblical values and they will lead to
destruction.
This is what
we have described in Manasseh’s reign. To summarize all the evil things that he
did, first of all he rebuilt the high places Hezekiah had destroyed. So he is
going to reintroduce all of the false religion. Second, he followed in the
footsteps of Ahab and Jezebel. Jeroboam isn’t mentioned here, he is worse than
the other kings that followed in the footsteps of Jeroboam; he follows in the
footsteps of Ahab and Jezebel and erects altars to Baal and the Asherah. Third,
along with this he worships the stars and the false gods associated with them.
This is indicated by the phrase “the hosts of heaven.” The word “host” is an
archaic word that refers to the armies of heaven, and this is a term used in
the Scripture to refer to the angelic hosts, whether it is the fallen angels of
the holy angels. Fourth, he built altars to the false gods in the temple to the
Lord. He goes into the
But he goes
beyond this to even worse behavior. 2 Kings 21:6 NASB “He made his
son pass through the fire, practiced witchcraft and used divination, and dealt
with mediums and spiritists. He did much evil in the sight of the LORD provoking {Him to anger.}” So he is going
to bring about God’s judgment. [7] “Then he set the carved image of Asherah
that he had made, in the house of which the LORD said to David and to his son Solomon, ‘In
this house and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen from all the tribes of Israel,
I will put My name forever. [8] “And I will not make the feet of
Example,
today if we go to
Then back in
2 Kings chapter 21 we get the Lord’s instruction. 2 Kings
2 Kings
2 Kings
21:14 NASB “I will abandon the remnant of My inheritance and deliver
them into the hand of their enemies, and they will become as plunder and spoil
to all their enemies.” Here is God saying that the way I am going to punish the
nation is by removing them from their land and they are going to become slaves
to their conquerors. Which is exactly what happened. Why? [15] “because they
have done evil in My sight…” The ultimate causation was spiritual; the ultimate
reason was they had rejected God and they had disobeyed him. It was not because
they had a wrong political philosophy, not because they had a problem with
immigrants that came into the land; the reason they failed in other areas of
the law was because they had rejected God at the very core and were worshipping
some other deity. That is the core of evil. “… and have been provoking Me to
anger since the day their fathers came from
2 Kings
21:16 NASB “Moreover, Manasseh shed very much innocent blood until
he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another; besides his sin with which he made
Judah sin, in doing evil in the sight of the LORD.” So he basically institutes a
persecution against anyone who does not fall in line with his religious beliefs
and there is a bloody slaughter of prophets and priests and anyone who is part
of the remnant. So the remnant is reduced to almost nothing by the end of
Manasseh’ reign. The sin by which he made
God brings
Manasseh under personal divine discipline. It is amazing that some people will
only turn to God when God puts them
under incredible pressure. Now there are many people who even under the most
adverse circumstances will never turn to God because it is not just a matter of
circumstances, it is a matter of volition.
2 Chronicles 33:10 NASB “The LORD spoke to Manasseh and his people, but
they paid no attention.”
In verse 11
we are told that God personally brought discipline on Manasseh by bringing the
army of
2 Chronicles
33:18 NASB “Now the rest of the acts of Manasseh even his prayer to
his God, and the words of the seers who spoke to him in the name of the LORD God of
So all of
this is recorded for us and we see the grace of God at the very end of
Manasseh’s life, despite all of the evil that he did. Is there anyone is the
Scripture who is more evil in terms of his relationship to God than Manasseh,
who commits more violence, who commits more murders in the name of religion,
who does more horrible things in terms of his own family—child sacrifice—than
this particular individual? Yet God’s grace is so great that when Manasseh
humbled himself and turned to God and trusted in Him he is given salvation.
Because salvation is a free gift that is given to us, not because of who we are
or what we have done, but it is given to us on the basis of God’s character and
God’s grace, and the fact that Jesus Christ paid the penalty for sin. So in the
Old Testament, even though that penalty had not yet been paid, when individuals
humbled themselves under the authority of God and turned to God as the source
of their salvation, that is when they are saved in terms of the way we normally
talk about these things.
So Manasseh
is a great example that we have in the Scripture that salvation is not based on
works, observance of the Torah, on any human action or any level of human
morality; it is based on turning to God and expecting God to be the one who
provides salvation. With the New testament and the fulfillment of those
prophecies we know that that comes through Jesus Christ. Acts 4;12 NASB
“And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven
that has been given among men by which we must be saved.” Salvation comes only
through Jesus Christ because he is the one who paid the penalty for sin on the
cross.