What Do You Call the End of the Story?

There are in scripture two tellings of the life of a king who was named Manasseh. Often we look at discrepancies in the alternate tellings of things as a stumbling block rather than as a profound cornerstone teaching tool in the hand of God. Such could be done here, for there are two tellings of the life of this king, and all of us are called to revisit his story according to one telling or the other or both, if we're really prepared to stand in the strong wind.

In II Kings, we learn of this king's downfall...his great pride and depravity by which he led the people astray into sorcery and witchcraft and idolatry beyond that even of the people who had inhabited the land earlier, the ones the Lord "cast out before the children of Israel." He seduced the people of Israel into "more evil than did the nations whom the Lord destroyed before the children of Israel." So God decided to "forsake the remnant of [His] inheritance, and deliver them into the hands of their enemies." "Moreover, Manasseh shed innocent blood very much till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another; beside his sin wherewith he made Judah to sin, in doing that which was evil in the sight of the Lord. Now the rest of the acts of Manasseh, and all that he did, and his sin that he sinned, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?" A King recognized as evil through and through, and put on record for his evil.

But if one digs deep enough to go to the book of the Chronicles, an amazing and unexpected conclusion to the story is found. Indeed, the chronicler agrees that "Manasseh made Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to err, and to do worse than the heathen whom the Lord had destroyed before the children of Israel." And it tells that this king was indeed carried in fetters to Babylon. But in this telling, the story does not end with the horrific results of his erring. This telling relates that "when he was in affliction, he besought the Lord his God, and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers. And prayed unto him: and he was entreated of him, and heard his supplication, and brought him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord he was God...the people did sacrifice still in the places for pagan worship, but yet unto the Lord their God only. Now the rest of the acts of Manasseh and his prayer unto his God and the words of the seers that spake to him in the name of the Lord God of Israel, behold they are written in the words of the kings of Israel." This telling not only visits his trespass, his sin, his offerings to false gods, but also his humbling and his prayer and the generous and gracious response of the "God who was entreated of him." The one telling is in II Kings 21, the other is in II Chronicles 33.

Both versions are offered to both the student and the teacher. All scripture is given to edify and to instruct, so my pondering over these discrepancies goes like this: why do some choose to tell history with its points of restoration intact and others choose to leave the restoration out,choosing to stop scanning the horizon at the peak of sin's consequences and lock the gaze there?

Both versions have the hand of God inspiring their composition, so how are we to understand His purpose in giving us this seemingly gross censorship of the most hopeful and beautiful part of the story in the one version? Is it to be our mirror, a plumb line of deep reflection when taken alongside its brother-telling? Or--even more disturbing to the heart that would know the heart of God as fully as possible--is it telling of a schism between the God-driven end-times prophetic interpretation and the monetarily-rewarding and self-aggrandizing interpretations so popular right now?