Manasseh’s prayer and God’s pity for him, his sins, his unfaithfulness, the places he built for worshiping gods and the Asherah idols before he humbled himself—all are written in the book of the seers.
So Moses and Aaron went to the king and told him, “This is what the Lord, the God of the Hebrews, says: ‘How long will you refuse to be sorry for what you have done? Let my people go to worship me.
Even to this day the people of Judah are still too proud. They have not learned to respect me or to follow my teachings. They have not obeyed the laws I gave you and your ancestors.
Jerusalem says, “The Lord is right, but I refused to obey him. Listen, all you people, and look at my pain. My young women and men have gone into captivity.
I tell you, when this man went home, he was right with God, but the Pharisee was not. All who make themselves great will be made humble, but all who make themselves humble will be made great.”
Because they did not know the way that God makes people right with him, they tried to make themselves right in their own way. So they did not accept God’s way of making people right.
Adoni-Bezek said, “Seventy kings whose thumbs and big toes had been cut off used to eat scraps that fell from my table. Now God has paid me back for what I did to them.” The men of Judah took Adoni-Bezek to Jerusalem, and he died there.