2 Chronicles 33:1-20 - Homiletics

Uncertain repentances.

While the father Hezekiah filled one of the niches of the throe typical best kings, his son Manasseh, the thirteenth King of Judah, by mournful contrast, occupies one of those of the three worst of all the kings of both lines, the other two being Jeroboam and Ahab. His reign, filling the longest space of all, viz. fifty-five years, occupies but a very unequal space on the page of the present history, and a yet shorter in the parallel ( 2 Kings 21:1-18 ). Eventful as it was, its eventfulness was of such a character that the historians may be pardonably credited with the very natural disposition to get over it as quickly as was possible. But from another point of view, the brevity marks significantly enough one unrelieved tale, one catalogued accumulation of personal sin, and sin against his high office and position, sin against his nation, and that sin—some of the worst of all sin—which consisted in seducing (verse 9 and 2 Kings 21:9 ) others to sin. The phenomena spread before the student in this chapter exhibit the King Manasseh—

I. TOUCHING THE LOWEST DEPTHS OF SIN THAT HAD DISTINGUISHED EITHER THRONE OF THE RENDED KINGDOM . The following particulars may be identified, as e.g. :

1 . The general type of his evil work resembled him to "the heathen, whom God" had actually driven out as intolerable, while making room in the land for his own people.

2 . The evil work which he did was an undoing of good work, and that the good of his own father before him. "He built again what Hezekiah his father had broken down" (verse 3).

3 . The evil work which he did was so much worse than that of King Ahaz ( 2 Chronicles 28:24 ), who shut up "the house of the Lord," in that it proceeded to the sacrilegious profanity of "building altars" for idolatrous worship, and "for all the host of heaven" in that house itself, "whereof the Lord had said, In Jerusalem shall my Name be for ever." In "that house" also he set "a carved image … idol."

4 . The evil work which he did was a persuading and seducing of the people (over whom he was presumably shepherd) to sin, so strong as to amount to little less than compulsion. Note how often the peculiar circumstances surrounding a tempter's tempting make the tempting so called, in nothing appreciable to fall short of compulsion. The serpent's tempting of Eve was discretion itself as compared with the brute force and the overpowering force with which evil and sin itself are proffered (?) to the mind, heart, hand, of many a helpless one, many a helpless thousand in the vortex of modern civilization, its methods and systems.

5 . The evil work did not shrink or stay before the enormity of "shedding innocent blood" ( 2 Kings 21:16 )—that triumph of devilishness—but e'en carried it to such excess that could make it possible for the historian to write, that with the wickedness "he filled Jerusalem from one end to another," making it to ring again with its sorrows and "cries from the ground," and with his sin.

II. WARNED IN AN EXCEPTIONALLY FORCIBLE MANNER . Allusion is made to this interposition in our verses 10, 18; but fuller information respecting it is given in 2 Kings 21:10-15 , and especially 2 Kings 21:12 , 2 Kings 21:13 , in language that has indeed made its mark. For the expression ( 2 Kings 21:12 ), "both his ears shall tingle," see 1 Samuel 3:11 ; Jeremiah 19:3 ; and upon the latter verse ( Jeremiah 19:13 ), see Rogers's 'Superhuman Origin of the Bible,' p. 268 (1st edit; 8vo). Note what real force, though so often neglected, " warning " should be.

III. SUFFERING THE MOST ABJECT DEGRADATION OF CAPTURE AND HUMILIATION OF PUNISHMENT . This is expressed in Jeremiah 19:11 , compared with 2 Kings 19:28 ; Amos 4:2 ; Job 41:2 ; see also again Rogers's ' Superhuman Origin of the Bible,' p. 286. The retribution in the mode and the place of punishment is to be observed. It is the Assyrians who carry him away, but his captivity is to Babylon.

IV. HIS EXCEEDING HUMBLING OF HIMSELF WITH ENTREATIES AND PRAYER BEFORE GOD IN HIS AFFLICTION , AND BECAUSE OF AFFLICTION . There are sufficient reasons for believing that there were present alike some penitence and some repentance in this humbling of himself, and beseeching "of the Lord his God," and "prayer to the God of his fathers." For God heard the prayer, in some sense also undeniably answered it,—brought Manasseh again to Jerusalem and to his throne there. It is also said that Manasseh came to be convinced of what he should never have doubted, that "the Lord he was God" (verse 13); that he reversed his former idolatrous practices and commands, cast out idols and altars from the city, repaired God's altar and offered peace offerings and thank offerings (verses 15, 16), and began other useful works for the defence of Jerusalem and his country. If he cleared himself, however, it is plain that he could not succeed in winning the people away with a perfect heart from "the high places," and their sacrifices and worship there (verse 17), which temptation it was he who had again put in their way at the beginning. How often has God's ready mercy and abundant pity run to meet and to help and to receive a penitence that did not prove itself after all pungent and intrinsically deep and lasting! How often does he still manifest himself thus "ready to forgive," while the strictest and severest self- searchings of our own hearts as to their sincerity and purity remain to be challenged! It is indeed to be noted, and it is a thing unexplained, and painfully, warningly suggestive, that one of the inspired histories (our parallel) has not a single word to say of his repentance and amendment; as though, whatever it were personally, and not a case "where tears of penance came too late for grace" for the individual, yet such repentance was all too late to rehabilitate his character, redeem his reign, or undo for a miserable nation the worst of his sins' consequences!