Manasseh succeeded to his heart's content. People followed him
greedily, except the steadfast few. And presently the prophets were
all gone, and the worship of the true God was nowhere practised except
in secret, and the sacred names were no more mentioned, and the land
gave itself up to all the foul rites and the shameful indulgences of
the heathen world, And then God's retribution came swiftly. Where the
rotting carcase was, there the eagles gathered together. These same
Babylonians whose ways the renegade Jews had so much admired and
imitated, swept down upon them with the talons of a vulture, with
cruelty that spared neither tender woman nor innocent child, and
Jerusalem was burned with fire, and Manasseh carried off in chains and
flung into a foreign prison to muse in solitude over the end of his
projects, and to find out there that the old ways had been the best.

There we are told that he repented, that he was stricken with shame
because of all the evil that he had done, and turned with prayer and
humility to the God whom he had defied. And we are told that God was
merciful and heard his entreaties, and accepted his repentance, and
brought him back after sorrowful years of imprisonment to his land and
throne. This is the part of the story which most people emphasise.
That, they say, is the main lesson of the story--Manasseh's repentance,
and how God accepted the rebellious sinner at the last and forgave him
all his iniquities--and they draw from that the conclusion that it is
never too late to turn to God, and that all the dark doings of a man's
life are swept clean away, if at any time the heart repents and
believes.

But this is not the part of the story which the sacred writers dwell
upon. In the Book of Kings, where there is another version of
Manasseh's doings, no mention is made whatever of the repentance, and