2 Kings 21 Bible study: The line of Samaria

"Manasseh was twelve years old when he began to reign, and he reigned fifty-five years in Jerusalem" (21:1). No king in 1 or 2 Kings is given a longer reign; the next longest is Azariah's (15:1), "fifty-two years in Jerusalem" (15:2). The verdict comes at once: "He did that which was evil in the LORD’s sight, after the abominations of the nations whom the LORD cast out before the children of Israel" (21:2) (tap abominations). Then the chapter says what he did, beginning with his father's work: "For he built again the high places which Hezekiah his father had destroyed" (21:3). Of Hezekiah the book had said, "He removed the high places, broke the pillars, and cut down the Asherah" (18:4). Manasseh "raised up altars for Baal, and made an Asherah, as Ahab king of Israel did, and worshiped all the army of the sky, and served them" (21:3). Moses had warned against looking up at "all the army of the sky" so that "you are drawn away and worship them, and serve them" (Deuteronomy 4:19). In Hebrew, 21:3 uses the same words for army of the sky, worshiped and served.

2 Kings 21:9→leads toLuke 6:39-40

"But they didn’t listen, and Manasseh seduced them to do that which is evil more than the nations did whom the LORD destroyed before the children of Israel" (21:9). The LORD's word by his servants the prophets says he "has also made Judah to sin with his idols" (21:11), and of his son Amon the chapter says, "He walked in all the ways that his father walked in" (21:21). Jesus "spoke a parable to them": "Can the blind guide the blind? Won’t they both fall into a pit?" (Luke 6:39), and "A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher" (Luke 6:40). Jesus doesn't cite 2 Kings 21, so setting his words beside it is a reading, resting on a shared subject, those who lead others the wrong way and those who follow them, not on a shared word. Some read the two together: a king who led Judah astray (21:9, 21:11), the evil the LORD says he will bring on "Jerusalem and Judah" (21:12), and a son who walked in his father's ways (21:21). Others read Jesus' words within their own setting, among his sayings on judging others and on the speck and the beam (Luke 6:37, 6:41-42), and read 21:9 and 21:21 as the book's account of Judah's kings, without looking from one to the other.

מָחָהmachahsay ma-KHAH

Brown-Driver-Briggs: "wipe, wipe out", and "blot out = exterminate". Strong's: "properly, to stroke or rub; by implication, to erase". "I will wipe Jerusalem as a man wipes a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down" (21:13): the verb comes three times in that one verse. Seven chapters earlier the book had said, "The LORD didn’t say that he would blot out the name of Israel from under the sky" (14:27), with the same verb. It is the verb of the flood, "I will destroy man whom I have created from the surface of the ground" (Genesis 6:7), and of Moses' prayer, "please blot me out of your book which you have written" (Exodus 32:32). It is also the verb of the LORD's words in Isaiah: "I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake" (Isaiah 43:25).