In Second Kings, chapter twenty-four, verse three, the fall of Judah was God’s judgment upon the obstinate and unrepentant people who followed the terrible sins of Manasseh. Apostasy has reached its limit. The priests and prophets uttered lies as in Jeremiah five, verse thirty-one, and chapter six, stanza thirteen accordingly. The meaning is not for the personal sins and crimes of the wicked Manseseh forty or fifty years previously, but that the class of sins introduced by Manasseh, being persisted in by the people, brought the stern judgments of God upon them. These sins are idolatry, accompanied by licentious rites, child murder, or sacrifice to Moloch, sodomy Second Kings twenty-three, verse seven, and the use of enchantments and the practice of magical arts as in Second Kings twenty-one, verse six, respectively.
God intervened properly and directly for their own sins, and remotely for the sins of Manasseh had so corrupted the whole body of the people that they became incurable, and Josiah’s reformation had no lasting influence to recover them. Immediately upon his death, they relapsed into their old idolatry and other vices. Manasseh’s personal sins, as their chief ruler, were considered as national sins and merited punishment yet would never have been charged on the nation unless they had made them their own by their impenitency for them and repetition of them.
Love of dishonest gain, cheating, immorality, and prostitution, as in Jeremiah five, verses eight to nine. The injustice and violence in chapter six, verse seven, including falsehood in chapter eight, verses nine through ten, and infidelity in chapter nine, verse thirteen, characterized the people. The severe judgment of God upon His Old Testament people serves as a warning to believers today. If God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare those who have been grafted in if they conform to the world and lifestyle of sin.