1. Manasseh was 12 years old when he became king, and he ruled for fifty-five years in Jerusalem.
2. He did what was evil in the Lord’s eyes, imitating the detestable practices of the nations that the Lord had driven out before the Israelites.
3. He rebuilt the shrines that his father Hezekiah had destroyed, set up altars for the Baals, and made sacred poles. He bowed down to all the stars in the sky and worshipped them.
4. He even built altars in the Lord’s temple, the very place the Lord was speaking about when he said, "My name will remain in Jerusalem forever."
5. Manasseh built altars for all the stars in the sky in both courtyards of the Lord’s temple.
6. He burned his own sons alive in the Ben-hinnom Valley, consulted sign readers, fortune-tellers, and sorcerers, and used mediums and diviners. He did much evil in the Lord’s eyes and made him angry.
7. Manasseh set up the carved image he had made in God’s temple, the very temple God had spoken about to David and his son Solomon, saying: In this temple and in Jerusalem, which I have selected out of all Israel’s tribes, I will put my name forever.
8. I will never again remove Israel from the fertile land I gave to your ancestors, provided they carefully do everything I have commanded them—keeping all the Instruction, the regulations, and the case laws given through Moses.
9. In this way Manasseh led Judah and the residents of Jerusalem into doing even more evil than the nations that the Lord had wiped out before the Israelites.