2. The accession of the youthful king appears to have been the signal for an entire change, if not in the for- eign policj^, at any rate in the religious administration of the kingdom. At so early an age he can scarcely have been the spontaneous author of so great an altera- tion, and we may infer accordingly that it was the work of the idolatrous, or Ahaz pariy, which had been re- pressed during the reign of Hezekiah, but had all along, like the Komish clergy under Edward VI in England, looked on the reform with a sullen acquiescence, and thwarted it when they dared. The change which the king's measures brought about was, after all, superficial. The idolatry which was publicly discountenanced was practiced privately (Isa. i, 29; ii, 20; Ixv, 3). The priests and the prophets, in spite of their outward or- thodoxy, were too often little better than licentious drunkards (Isa. xxviii, 7). The nobles of Judah kept the new moons and sabbaths much in the same way as tliose of France kept their Lents when Louis XIV had made devotion a court ceremonial (Isa. i, 13, 14). There are signs that even among the king's highest officers of state there was one, Shebna the scribe (Isa. xxxvii, 2), the treasurer (Isa. xxii, 15) "over the house," whose policy was simply that of a selfish ambition, himself possibly a foreigner (comp. Blunt's Script. Coinc. iii, 4), and whom Isaiah sa\v through and distrusted. It was, moreover, the traditional policy of " the princes of Ju- dah" (compare one remarkable instance in the reign of Joash, 2 Chron. xxiv, 17) to favor foreign alliances and the toleration of foreign worship, as it was that of the true priests and prophets to protest against it. It would seem, accordingly, as if they urged upon the young king that scheme of a close alliance with Babylon which Isa- iah had condemned, and, as the natural consequence of this, the adoption, as far as possible, of its worship, and that of other nations whom it was desirable to concili- ate. The morbid desire for widening the range of their knowledge and penetrating into the mysteries of other systems of belief may possibly have contributed now, as it had done in the days of Solomon, to increase the evil (.Jer. ii, 10-25; Ewald, Cesc/;. Isr. iii, 6G6). The result was a debasement which had not been equalled even in the reign of Ahaz, uniting in one centre the abominations which elsewhere existed separately. Not content with sanctioning their presence in the Holy City, as Solomon and Kehoboam had done, Manasseh defiled with it the sanctuary itself (2 Chron. xxxiii, 4). The worship thus introduced was, as has been said, predom- inantly Babylonian in its character. " He observed times, and used enchantments, and used witchcraft, and dealt with a familiar spirit, and with wizards" (ver. (5). The worship of " tlie host of heaven," which each man celebrated for himself on the roof of his own house, took the place of that of the Lord God of Sabaoth (2 Kings xxiii, 12 ; Isa. Ixv, 3, 11 ; Zeph. i, 5 ; .Ter. viii, 2 ; xix, 13 ; xxii, 29). With this, however, there was as- sociated the old Molech worsliip of the Ammonites. The fires were rekindled in the valley of Ben-Hinnom. Tophet was (for the first time, apparently) built into a statel}' fabric (2 Kings xvi, 3 ; Isa. xxx, 33, as compared with Jer. vii, 81 ; xix, 5 ; Ewald, Gesch. Isr. iii, C(J7). Even the king's sons, instea<l of being presented to Je- hovah, received a horrible fire-baptism dedicating them to ]Molech (2 Chron. xxxiii, 6), while others were actu- ally slaughtered (Ezek. xxiii, 37, 39). The Baal and Ashtaroth ritual, which had been imported under Solo-
mon from the Phoenicians, was revived with fresh splen- dor, and, in the worship of the "queen of heaven," fixed its roots deep into the habits of tlie people (Jer. vii, 18). Worse and more horrible than till, the Asherah, the im- age of Astarte, or the obscene symbol of a phallic wor- ship (comp. AsiiERAH, and, in addition to the authori- ties there cited, Mayer, De Reform. Jusiw, etc., in the T/ies. Theo. philol. Amstel. 1701) was seen in the house of which Jehovah had said tliat he would there put his name forever (2 Kings xxi, 7). All this was accom- panied by the extremest moral degradation. The wor- ship of those old Eastern religions has been well de- scribed as a kind of " sensuous intoxication," simply sensuous, and therefore associated inevitably with a fiendish cruelty, leading to the utter annihilation of the spiritual life of men (Hegel, Philos. of History, i, 3). So it was iu Jerusalem in the days of Manasseh. Eival priests (the Chemarim of Zeph. i, 4) were consecrated for this hideous worship. Women dedicating them- selves to a cultus like that of the Babylonian Mylitta wove hangings for the Asherah as they sat there (May- er, cap. ii, § 4). The Kadeshim, in closest neighborhood with them, gave themselves up to yet darker abomina- tions (2 Kings xxiii, 7). The awfid words of Isaiah (i, 10) had a terrible truth in them. Those to whom he spoke were literally "rulers of Sodom and princes of Go- morrah." Every faith was tolerated but the old faith of Israel. This was abandoned and proscribed. The altar of Jehovah was displaced (2 Chron. xxxiii, 16). The very ark of the covenant was removed from the sanctuary (2 Chron. xxxv, 3). The sacred. books of the people were so systematically destroyed that fifty years later men listened to the Book of the Law of Jeliovah as a newly-discovered treasure (2 Kings xxii, 8). It may well be, according to a Jewish tradition, that this fanaticism of idolatry led Manasseh to order the name Jehovah to be erased from all documents and inscrip- tions (Patrick, ad loc). All this involved also a system- atic violation of the weekly sabbatic rest and the con- sequent loss of one witness against a merely animal life (Isa. Ivi, 2 ; Ivili, 13). The tide of corruption carried away some even of those who, as ]iriests and prophets, should have been steadfast in resisting it (Zeph. iii, 4 ; Jer. ii, 26 ; x, 13 ; vi. 13).