Which king of Israel or Judah had the longest reign?<\/p>\n
Not David. Not Solomon. Neither Jehoshaphat nor Hezekiah.<\/p>\n
The longest reigning king was Manasseh. He reigned for 55 years \u2013 the equivalent of 1961 until today. And yet he was a wicked, evil king:<\/p>\n
Because Manasseh king of Judah has committed these abominations and has done things more evil than all that the Amorites did, who were before him, and has made Judah also to sin with his idols, therefore thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: . . . \u00a0I will wipe Jerusalem as one wipes a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down. And I will forsake the remnant of my heritage and give them into the hand of their enemies (from 2 Kings 21:11-14).<\/p>\n
Why did God leave His people for such a long time under the authority of a bad man \u2013 such a bad man that, according to Jewish tradition, he had the prophet Isaiah sawn in two? Why did the people have to suffer? Why did God subject His people to injustice, to being led even further astray from Him?<\/p>\n
The passage tells us. It is not only Manasseh who is evil. The people also are guilty. The king influences them, but they are responsible for \u201csin with his idols.\u201d And so they must bear with an evil king for all these decades.<\/p>\n
And make no mistake: God is the one who allows Manasseh to remain in power. For \u201cthe Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will\u201d (Daniel 4:17, 25, 32).<\/p>\n
God\u2019s final judgment is yet to come, but is fully determined: He will send His people into exile. He will use the Babylonians to destroy the very temple dedicated to His Name. As 2 Kings 21 makes clear, Manasseh\u2019s sins, and the sins of the people under him, lead to this horrible judgment of God (see especially Lamentations 2 for a description of some of the horrors).<\/p>\n
But the judgment of God does not fall during Manasseh\u2019s reign, nor during the reign of evil Amon, his son, nor during the reign of good Josiah, Manasseh\u2019s grandson. Why the delay?<\/p>\n
Perhaps in part because in his old age, near the end of his reign, Manasseh repents:<\/p>\n
[The Assyrians] captured Manasseh with hooks and bound him with chains of bronze and brought him to Babylon.\u00a0 \u00a0And when he was in distress, he entreated the favor of the LORD his God and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers.\u00a0 He prayed to him, and God was moved by his entreaty and heard his plea and brought him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the LORD was God. \u00a0\u00a0(2 Chronicles 33:11-13)<\/p>\n
As the Apostle Paul states in another context: \u201cNote then the kindness and the severity of God\u201d (Romans 11:22). Kindness and mercy toward one of the most evil of all the Judean kings; severity toward the rebellious people; kindness and mercy to their descendants, in bringing them back from exile.<\/p>\n
We can continue the thought: Kindness and mercy to all those today from every tribe and tongue and nation who repent, who turn, who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and are saved; severity to those from every tribe and tongue and nation who continue in rebellion, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness (Romans 1:18), who reject their rightful King and only possible Savior.<\/p>\n
Like the people of Judah, we the people of the United States do not deserve even a modicum of God\u2019s mercy, and so we do not deserve an honest, good, principled leader of our government. At this point, it certainly does not look like we will get one this year. But if God could bring Manasseh to repentance, He can bring to repentance any American president; if God could destroy His own temple and bring down the kingdom called by His Name, He can bring down in judgment the United States of America; and if God could restore His people, showing mercy that they did not deserve, and raise up from a descendant of this very Manasseh the Savior of the world, then God can bring a sinful and rebellious nation today to repentance, and use it for His good and wise purposes to bring about the final culmination of His great \u00a0plan.<\/p>\n
Father, in Your mercy, would you would grant such repentance?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Which king of Israel or Judah had the longest reign? Not David. Not Solomon. Neither Jehoshaphat nor Hezekiah. The longest reigning king was Manasseh. He reigned for 55 years \u2013…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,14,15],"tags":[50,56,66,134,432,491,663,727,731,877,969,1065,1066,1209,1210,1327,1484,1519],"class_list":["post-1593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-commentary","category-devotions","tag-2-chronicles-33","tag-2-kings-21","tag-2016-election","tag-amon","tag-donald-trump","tag-evil-kings","tag-government","tag-hezekiah","tag-hillary-clinton","tag-kindness-and-severity","tag-manasseh-king-of-judah","tag-never-clinton","tag-never-trump","tag-president","tag-presidential-election","tag-repentance","tag-sovereignty","tag-suffering"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1593\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}