How Did Manasseh Exceed the Idolatry of His Predecessors?
Manasseh was only twelve years old when he began to reign. Inexperienced as he was, he was easily influenced by the worshipers of Baal and Asherah, or Ashteroth. To the worship of these idolatrous gods Manasseh added a third form of worship: devotion to the heavenly bodies and the constellations. Remnants of this worship are seen today in astrology. “This worship differed from the Syrophoenician star-worship, in which sun and moon were worshipped under the names of Baal and Astarte as the bearers of the male and female powers of nature, and was pure star-worship, based upon the idea of the unchangeableness of the stars in contradistinction to the perishableness of everything earthly, according to which the stars were worshipped not merely as the originators of all rise and decay in nature, but also as the leaders and regulators of sublunary things.” (C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament, 3:1:469.) In Judah the stars were worshiped, not by devotions to images, bu
