How to avoid repeating our mistakes
2 Kings 21:1-26
Most of us can think of situations where life seems to have repeated itself. Maybe it was a conflict we escaped with someone only to see ourselves in a similar situation with another person. Perhaps it was a destructive friendship or relationship that we managed to get out of only to plunge into another such. Possibly, it was an overwhelming work environment that we finally fled only to tumble into the same scenario yet again. Frustrating as these patterns are, the key to them is reflection. Even if we escape out of one situation, we will predictably reproduce it again through our behaviour and choices unless we learn from our past mistakes. Often, we must face the hidden depths of our own behaviour and thinking if we truly want to leave behind the mistakes of our past.
An honest look at Judah’s failure
For God’s people in exile, it was important to take an honest look at their own history and recognise what was so terribly wrong that they had to be banished from the land God had promised them as a permanent home (2 Kings 21:8). Despite good kings like Hezekiah, the instinct for idolatry and unfaithfulness to God ran deep and kept repeating itself. Thus, Manasseh, Hezekiah’s son, reverted to everything that his father had cut out of the worship of Israel (2 Kings 21:3).[1] Manasseh blatantly disobeyed God’s central commands of exclusive worship to be given to Him in one place only, no images of God or other gods (2 Kings 21:3-5, 7; cf Deut 12:13-14; Exod 20:3-4), and no child sacrifice or occult practices (2 Kings 21:6 cf. Deut 18:10-11). Yet, he seemed to be oblivious that anything was wrong since he was following in customs familiar from the Canaanites (2 Kings 21:2) and long repeated in Israel and Judah’s history. The ease with which the people slipped back into these practices after Hezekiah’s religious reform (2 Kings 18:3-5) highlights just how ingrained they were among God’s people.
The reason for God’s judgment
Ominously, Manasseh’s worship practices echo those of the Canaanites whom God had banished from the land precisely for those (2 Kings 21:2). The implication is that the same fate was to await Judah if they persisted in the same sins. Moreover, king and people exceeded their evil and when confronted with God’s truth through the prophets, they refused to listen (2 Kings 21:9-11).[2] Neither did Amon, Manasseh’s son do any better (2 Kings 21:20-22). If the exiles wondered how God could go back on His promise of giving them the land, Israel’s history of disobedience from the exodus to Manasseh’s reign provides the explanation (2 Kings 21:15). Judah’s evil compared to the worst of Israel’s as seen in that kingdom’s most notorious king, Ahab and his dynasty (2 Kings 21:13). The description of a bowl wiped clean of even a remnant of food (v.13) speaks of complete devastation and becoming plunder and spoil indicates Judah’s coming military defeat (2 Kings 21:14). Long before the final disaster, the signs and warnings were all there for the people to see and hear but they refused to confront the reality of their sin.
How to avoid repeating our mistakes
When we face repeated patterns of conflict, wrong choices and difficult situations, much like Israel and Judah, we need to face up to our part in how we landed there. Even if we are not to blame for all the evils we suffer from, it is important to reflect on what decisions, thinking and attitude led us to the outcome we experience. Repentance and turning away from what is wrong in God’s estimate is important but we can only do it if we confront it in ourselves. As long as we are convinced that we are the victim of our circumstances or God’s whim, we will not see our part and recognise that we bear responsibility for what happened to us. Such reflection is also important so that we can change course and live in new ways. For Israel-Judah, this meant becoming familiar with God’s ways, as revealed in God’s Law and through the prophets, so they could order their lives according to His will. May we, too, seek God’s will through His Word and work out faithful life practices that follow from it.
[1] It is sometimes argued that Hezekiah was wrong to plead for the extension of his life because Manasseh would have been born in those fifteen years (2 Kings 20:6; 21:1) and he turned out to be the worst king of Judah who sealed the people’s fate of exile. However, such thinking is misguided because it assumes that if we pester God long enough or hard enough, He will give us what we want even if it is not good for us, so that He could teach us a lesson and tell us at the end, ‘I told you so!’. This, however, is more in line with pagan thinking (e.g. the story of Croesus who asked the gods that his touch may turn everything to gold and learnt his lesson the hard way when even his daughter and the food he wanted to eat turned to gold!). Jesus taught that God gives His children good gifts, not evil (Matt 7:9-11). While the context is admittedly different (Jesus’ saying assumes that the request is for good things), it is nevertheless inconceivable that the Father would give bad gifts to His children. In any case, if the writer wanted to make the point that Hezekiah’s plea was wrong, he could have included the birth of Manasseh in that episode to highlight the bad consequences. However, there is no direct connection made between the two. Moreover, given the timeframe between Hezekiah’s reign and the Babylonian exile and the number of kings whose reign needs to fit into it, it is likely that Manasseh was co-regent with his father in his early years. If so, then he need not have been born in Hezekiah’s last fifteen years of life.
[2] The parallel description of Manasseh’s life records his repentance and religious reform (2 Chron 33:10-17), which is absent from Kings. It is important not to conflate the two accounts, however, because (much like the different gospel accounts of Jesus in the NT) they serve different purposes. The Book of Chronicles was put together post-exile and it looked back on Judah’s history and aimed to teach the returned exiles how they should live from now on. Manasseh’s story was meant to encourage a disheartened population that even the worst sinners could repent and their fate of exile be reversed by God, as his captivity had been. The Book of Kings, probably compiled in its final form early on in the exile, had a different purpose. It needed to bring God’s people to repentance and an understanding of why the exile had to happen. Thus, the emphasis of Kings in Manasseh’s story, is on his sin and the trajectory of evil that kept resurfacing despite the story line being punctuated by better kings. This difference shows us that any re-telling of a story/history will highlight different aspects of it depending on the audience.
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