2 KINGS 21
9 But they hearkened not: and Manasseh seduced them to do more evil than did the nations whom Yahweh destroyed before the children of Israel.
Manasseh - seducer and persecutor
He reared up altars for Baal and Asherah, and worshipped all the host of heaven in the courts of the Lord's house, and filled Jerusalem with innocent blood. Amon, his successor, walked in the ways that his father walked in, and served the idols that his father served; and these kings were followed by priests, prophets and people, as we find Jeremiah complaining,
'The priests said not, Where is the Lord? . . . The pastors also transgressed against me, and the prophets prophesied by Baal . . The house of Israel is ashamed: they, their kings, their princes, their prophets, saying to a stock, Thou art my father! and to a stone, Thou .Jer. 2:8, 26). Even of Jerusalem itself he says, 'There is not one that seeketh the truth.'-(5:1).
No wonder, then, that they permitted the Temple to go to ruin, and the copy of the Law, belonging to it-perhaps the very autograph of Moses-to be lost. No wonder if Josiah, with such a father and grandfather, such priests and such a court, had been ignorant of the denunciations of the Law.
TC Jan 1878