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Why did Yahweh determine that Judah had to be punished after the reign of Manasseh? Other kings of Judah, beginning with Solomon, had promoted idolatries of various sorts. Manasseh was uniquely evil, but there is another factor. Throughout 1-2 Kings, the narrator reports that the Kings of Israel followed the ways of Jeroboam who "made Israel sin" (1 Ki 14:16; 15:26, 30, 34, 16:2; etc.). The phrase is used with reference to Jeroboam's influence some 20x in 1-2 Kings. Throughout the whole of Kings, however, no king (so far as my search has revealed) "made Judah sin" - until Manasseh (2 Ki 21:11, 16). Every dynasty that made Israel sin was destroyed - Jeroboam, Omri, Jehu. And when Manasseh leads Judah astray, the Davidic dynasty is also interrupted. Just as Jeroboam's dynasty was not rescued by the comparative goodness of his son Abijah, and just as Ahab's dynasty was not rescued by his repentance, so the reforms of Josiah will not rescue the dynasty of David from the discipline of exile once a Davidic king has "made Judah sin." When a Davidic king, who is supposed to be a shepherd to Yahweh's people, turns into an enemy of the people of God, then the dynasty has to be disciplined.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Wednesday, October 05, 2005 at 08:54 AM
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