[623] Ecclus. xlix. 4. CHAPTER XXIX _MANASSEH_ B.C. 686-641 2 KINGS xxi. 1-16 "Shall the throne of wickedness have fellowship with Thee, That frameth mischief by statute? They gather themselves in troops against the soul of the righteous, And condemn the innocent blood."--PSALM xciv. 20, 21. "Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small; Though with patience long He waiteth, with exactness grinds He all." Manasseh was born after Hezekiah's recovery from his terrible illness. He was but twelve years old when he began to reign. Of his mother Hephzibah we know nothing, nor of the Zechariah who was her father; but perhaps Isaiah in one passage (lxii. 4) may refer to her name, "My delight is in her."[624] The son of Hezekiah and Hephzibah was the worst of all the kings of Judah, and had the longest reign. The tender age of Manasseh when he came to the throne may perhaps account for the fact that the "forgetfulness" which his name implied[625] was not a forgetting of other sorrows, but of all that was noble and righteous in the attempted reformation which had been the main religious work of his father's life. In Judah, as in England, a king was not supposed to be of age until he was eighteen.[626] For six years Manasseh must have been to a great extent under the influence of his regents and counsellors. There always existed in Jerusalem, even in the best times, a heathenising party, and it was, unfortunately, composed of princes and aristocrats who could bring strong influence to bear upon the king.[627] They did not deny Jehovah, but they did not recognise Him as the sole or the supreme God of heaven and earth. To them He was the local deity of Israel and Judah. But there were other gods, the gods of the nations, and their aim always was to recognise the existence of these deities and to pay homage to their power. If their favour could not be purchased except by their immediate votaries, at least their anger might be averted. These politicians advocated a fatal and incongruous syncretism, or at least an unlimited tolerance for heathen idols, for which they could, unhappily, quote the precepts and example of the Wise King, Solomon. If any one questioned their views as a dangerous idolatry, and an insult to "Jehovah thundering out of Zion, throned Between the cherubim," they had but to point from the walls of Jerusalem to the confronting summit of Olivet, where still remained the shrines which the son of David had erected three centuries earlier to Chemosh, and Milcom, and Ashtoreth, who, since his day, had always found, even in Jerusalem, some worshippers, open or secret, to acknowledge their divinity.