It was a wet day in London yesterday as I stood on tip-toe to see a distant glimpse of the Queen on the river. Nearly as much water above her as below her! I thought I owed it to her long reign to make some effort as I had last seen her in 1961 when she was driven past our flat. (I was very, very young . . .)
Queen Elizabeth has now reigned longer than all but one of the Kings of Israel in the Bible. The one who reigned a little less than her is proof, if such were needed, that longevity is not itself a virtue. Our Queen has witnessed marked spiritual decline in her nation during her reign but she herself has exercised considerable goodness and God-fearing stability in the midst of it all. Mannasseh reigned in Jerusalem for 55 years and no such compliments can be paid to him.
As with all long-reigning monarchs he started early - at twelve years old in fact. The son of the godly king Hezekiah he set about undoing all the good that his father had done. Over centuries since Joshua led them into the Promised Land the Israelite people and kings had struggled to be holy and good among the Canaanites. Mannasseh didn't appear to struggle - he behaved exactly as if he was a Canaanite king. He involved his own son in fire sacrifice, practiced witchcraft, placed the sex symbol Asherah pole in the middle of God's temple and more besides. He was astonishing but for all the wrong reasons: longevity gives its beneficiary time but not goodness.
Thankfully Israel's longest reigning monarch demonstrates that goodness itself has greater longevity than evil. His was a peculiar enthronement - his initial throne the place where he was lifted up to die, his title King of the Jews written first by a foreign official, his crown one of thorns, his miltary escort spitting at him and his people telling jokes at his expense or running away.
The prophet Isaiah, though, foresaw that a throne will be established in steadfast love, and of his government and peace there will be no end. The King of the Jews remains the world's longest serving human monarch, an honour recognised in Queen Elizabeth's own coronation service when the Dean said, Receive this Orb set under the Cross, and remember that the whole world is subject to the Power and Empire of Christ our Redeemer.
Manasseh's story is remarkable for its ending. The Assyrians captured him, bound him and dumped him in a dungeon far away in Babylon. When, records the Chronicler, he was in distress, he entreated the favour of the Lord his God and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers. He prayed to him, and God was moved by his entreaty and heard his plea and brought him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord was God.
He set about undoing some of the spiritual carnage he had created. How grateful Manasseh and every human being should be that the longest-serving monarch and the One who will remain on the throne when all other thrones have fallen, is unalterably good and unfathomably merciful.
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