1. Manasseh was twelve years old when he became king, and he reigned for fifty-five years in Jerusalem.
2. He did evil in the sight of the Lord and committed the same horrible sins practiced by the nations whom the Lord drove out ahead of the Israelites.
3. He rebuilt the high places that his father Hezekiah had destroyed; he set up altars for the Baals and made Asherah poles. He bowed down to all the stars in the sky and worshiped them.
4. He built altars in the Lord’s temple, about which the Lord had said, “Jerusalem will be my permanent home.”
5. In the two courtyards of the Lord’s temple he built altars for all the stars in the sky.
6. He passed his sons through the fire in the Valley of Ben-Hinnom and practiced divination, omen reading, and sorcery. He set up a ritual pit to conjure up underworld spirits and appointed magicians to supervise it. He did a great amount of evil in the sight of the Lord and angered him.
7. He put an idolatrous image he had made in God’s temple, about which God had said to David and to his son Solomon, “This temple in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, will be my permanent home.