God’s Word for You

2 Chronicles 33:1-6 sorcery, mediums and spiritists

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Sunday, June 8, 2025

33:1 Manasseh was twelve years old when he became king, and he reigned fifty-five years in Jerusalem. 2 He did what was evil in the eyes of the LORD, but what was according to the abominable practices of the nations whom the LORD drove out before the people of Israel. 3 He rebuilt the high places which his father Hezekiah had broken down, and erected altars to the Baals. He made Asherahs, and worshiped all the starry hosts. 4 He built altars in the House of the LORD, about which the LORD had said, “My name will remain in Jerusalem for ever.” 5 And he built altars for all the starry hosts in the two courts of the house of the LORD. 6 And he sacrificed his sons in the fire as an offering in the valley of Ben Hinnom, and practiced fortune telling and sought omens and practiced sorcery, and consulted mediums and spiritists. He did much evil in the eyes of the LORD, provoking him to anger.

Manasseh, Hezekiah’s son, did not follow in his father’s footsteps. Hezekiah had walked according to the word of the Lord, and while he struggled with pride, and sometimes with being short-sighted in leadership, he was a faithful man who repented of his sins and who wanted to follow the Lord in everything he did. Manasseh did not.

Manasseh was twelve when he began to reign alongside his father, but the chronology of this final period of Judah—the final eighty-nine years—becomes ninety-nine years if we fail to take into account that Manasseh must have been co-ruler with his father Hezekiah for about ten years. This means that Manasseh was not a boy of twelve when he was alone on the throne, but a grown man of twenty-two who made idolatry his chosen path.

His half-century on the throne of Judah began in the worst possible way. As much as his father had tried to walk in the ways of the Lord, Manasseh did everything “according to the abominable practices of the nations whom the LORD drove out before the people of Israel.” The Amorites were often held out as the worst of a bad bunch (Joshua 7:7), but the Philistines, Amalekites, and the others were all removed, either as Canaanite nations or at least as threats to God’s people. The main reason for this was so that the people would not be led into their pagan practices, but now Manasseh brought it all back into the very walls of the city—even into the temple itself.

The list of First Commandment violations is so grim that it makes the reader feel unclean. He re-built pagan altars everywhere. The Asherah trees and poles his father had cut down, he planted once again. Then there was a new abomination: astrology. He worshiped the starry hosts, meaning the stars and planets and occasional comets and things. We’re told that he set up altars in the House of the LORD, and we’ll reserve our comments about that, since we’ll find out something even worse in verse 7 in the next section.

He took up the practice of his grandfather, the wicked king Ahaz. Both men sacrificed some of their own sons in the terrible worship of Moloch in the valley called Ben Hinnom. After Manasseh’s time, the prophet Jeremiah condemned the practice and foresaw God’s judgment. He said, “The days are coming when that place will no longer be called Topheth or the Valley of Ben Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter, for they will bury the dead in Topheth because there will be no other place left. The corpses of those people will become food for the birds in the sky and the wild animals in the land, and there will be no one to frighten them away” (Jeremiah 7:32-33).

Three or four other things should be mentioned. First, there was the practice known as ‘oneen, “fortune telling.” The word means to bring clouds, that is, to seek signs in the sky by reading the patterns of clouds (aeromancy) and other things such as the flights of birds (ornithomancy).

Then there was Manasseh’s obsession with mediums. This included reading the remains of a drink in a cup (hydromancy) but also learning secret things through other signs. The Hebrew word is related to the word for snake, but it is unknown whether snake-charming or snake-speaking was used in Manasseh’s time.

Thirdly, Manasseh consulted with spiritists (often translated wizards). In Babylon and Egypt, this was the term for astrologers or diviners like Pharaoh’s magicians. But a sorcerer or wizard in ancient times was one who used words (spells, magic chanting) to communicate with the dead or with demons. It was obviously used in direct opposition to the word of God, and still is today.

Beyond all of these things there is an incident that is perhaps hinted at in the New Testament. The writer to the Hebrews says this about the prophets: “They were stoned, they were sawed in two, they were tempted, they were killed with the sword. They went around in sheepskins and goatskins, needy, afflicted, and mistreated” (Hebrews 11:37). More than one ancient tradition has it that “sawed in two” is a reference to the way that wicked king Manasseh murdered the prophet Isaiah. I don’t need to elaborate on this, because the inspired writer does not say that it was Isaiah who was killed this way—hiding in a tree, but discovered somehow and having the tree sawn down. But Manasseh was guilty of terrible things.

When the Bible displays the sins of someone from ancient times, our first impulse should perhaps be to run to the mirror. Have I done something that displeased God this much? Have I sinned as Manasseh sinned? Have I given myself over to astrology, or omens, or have I been too curious about things better left alone and unknown? These sins run across all three of the commandments in the first table of the law, setting something above God, misusing God’s holy name or forgetting to use it for his praise, and abandoning worship in favor of something else.

The right way to keep the First Commandment is to make God supreme in our hearts and our lives. All of the other things in life, whether riches, or land, or things, or power, are just momentary things that must never be held up above God. This is especially true of our opinions, since we live in a time when people lift up their opinions over all. We should, as we confess in the Large Catechism, “walk straight ahead, using all God’s gifts exactly as a cobbler uses his needle, awl, and thread (for work, eventually to lay them aside) or as a traveler avails himself of an inn, food, and bed (only for his temporal need). Let each person be in life according to God’s order, allowing none of these good things to be his lord or idol” (Large Catechism I:47).

Lord Jesus Christ, bless us as travelers and humble workers in your world, and keep our eyes focused forever on you.

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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