Manasseh

Manasseh was the fourteenth king of Judah, son of Hezekiah, reigning about 697–642 BC—the longest reign of any Judean king. He reversed all of his father Hezekiah's reforms, rebuilding high places, erecting altars to Baal and Asherah poles, and even installing a carved image in the Jerusalem temple itself (2 Kings 21:1–9). He made his sons pass through fire, practiced divination and sorcery, and 'shed very much innocent blood, till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another' (2 Kings 21:16). The Chronicler adds an otherwise unattested tradition that Manasseh was captured and taken to Babylon by the Assyrians, where he repented and was restored—returning to Jerusalem and removing foreign altars (2 Chronicles 33:10–17). The Prayer of Manasseh in the Apocrypha reflects this tradition of penitence.