And he did evil in the sight of Jehovah, as Manasseh his father had done;
Manasseh reigned fifty-five years and ended in real repentance, yet his son copied only the first half of that story. This verse measures Amon by his father's sin, not by his father's return to God — so why does watching a man repent leave some hearts unmoved?
Amon knew how his father's idolatry had ended, and he still chose it. One writer weighs how short his trial was:
He followed his father's wicked example, but he never repented as his father did. He did have the advantage of knowing about his father's repentance, but this had no effect on him. The Lord evidently knew that two years was enough for Amon to repent. But nothing is said of him to his credit. He walked in a cold refusal of the ways of God, choosing idols instead… How sad an end for a man who had a godly grandfather!
Manasseh had cleared the idols away after God humbled him. Amon put them back — and that particular act carries its own weight:
To raise up idols that have been destroyed is even worse in God's eyes than to set up new ones. It shows insolent contempt for God. He has revealed Himself through His ways and His Word so that we would give up what dishonours Him. To return to such things is to act as though God did not exist and had not spoken. This is also what makes the Christian world so guilty today. God had separated it from idolatry and its immoral principles, and it has gone back to those principles.
Verse 22 says Amon abandoned the LORD; older translations read "he forsook the LORD." You can only leave what you once claimed. So the word points back to how he was raised:
He was probably born after his father's return from Babylon, so he must have had a godly upbringing. The expression "he forsook the LORD" would seem to show that in his earlier days he had professed to worship Him. He had such advantages, so his responsibility was greater — and his guilt greater with it.
A father's sin should warn the son who watches it. This son took it as license instead:
But there is a son in the family who will not take his father's wickedness as a warning. Instead he uses it as license to indulge in the same sin. The blow comes on him, not on the wretched parent. The son is doubly guilty, because he saw his father's shame and felt it enough to cover. But he ought to have stood against it. I do not mean in vengeance, for that belongs to the Lord. He should have hated the sin itself, while still feeling the deepest compassion for his parent.
Two years produced nothing worth recording, and even a drifting nation had had enough:
There is not one bright spot in this king's character to relieve the darkness of his life's brief record… He made himself hateful even to the people who had already drifted from God. They rid themselves of him by the hand of assassins. "And his servants conspired against him and put him to death in his house." His subjects must have been desperate. Only that explains breaking God's clear command — "Touch not My anointed."
Amon's own son broke the pattern. The next king proves that a family line of evil can end, and end early:
But after him comes a truly godly prince — Josiah — younger, too, than either. He was not too young to serve the Lord.
- Followed halfway. Amon copied his father's idolatry but not his father's repentance. The one part of his father's life worth copying was the part he skipped.
- Followed backwards. He restored idols his father had thrown out. God counts putting back what He made a man remove as worse than inventing new idols.
- Followed knowingly. Leaving the LORD points back to an earlier profession and a godly upbringing. Amon ignored those advantages, and that raised both his responsibility and his guilt.
- Followed to judgment. A son who takes his father's sin as license is doubly guilty. Two years gave Amon time to repent. Instead he died in his own house at his servants' hands.
- Followed by grace. Josiah follows at once after the darkest record in the book. No family line has to stay dark, and no one is too young to serve the Lord.
and he walked in all the way that his father had walked in, and served the idols that his father had served, and worshipped them;
Amon became king of Judah with every reason to know better. His father, Manasseh, had spent years worshipping idols, then came back from Babylon a changed man and pulled down the idols he had made. This verse tells us which example Amon followed.
Amon had more than one family example in front of him. One writer notes which one he took:
After Manasseh, Amon reigned; and Amon follows in the steps of his wicked father, not of his pious grandfather.
The sharpest point in Amon's record is what he left out. His father's story had two halves, and Amon imitated only the first:
His son Amon shows the utter corruption of human nature. He had watched the terrible experience his father went through. Manasseh had no doubt urged him to serve the LORD and be true to Him. Even so, he chose to follow his father's bad example of idolatry. He sinned more and more and did not repent like his father Manasseh, but died in his sins. Under his reign the wickedness reached a higher mark than under any previous king.
Amon was a grown man when his father died. Another writer draws a lesson for parents from that:
It is sad indeed to see that Manasseh's own son Amon was only twenty-two when his father died. Even so, his father's repentance had no influence on him at all. He only followed the sins of Manasseh's earlier years: he "did not humble himself before the LORD, as Manasseh his father had humbled himself, but this Amon incurred guilt more and more." What a solemn and urgent message this is to our hearts! We must make sure we lead our children in the right way, even from their infancy. And let us remember, they follow where we lead.
Manasseh had cleared his idols away. So serving "the idols that his father served" meant bringing back what had already been thrown down:
Whatever the case may be, to raise up idols that have been destroyed is even worse in the eyes of the LORD than to set up new ones. It shows insolent contempt for God. He has revealed Himself to us through His ways and His Word, so that He might make us give up what dishonours Him. To return to such things is to act as though God did not exist and had not spoken.
Amon's record says he abandoned the LORD. One commentator looks at the home he grew up in:
He was probably born after his father's return from Babylon, so he must have had a godly upbringing. The words "he abandoned the LORD" seem to show that in his earlier days he had professed to worship Him. His mother's name, Meshullemeth, means reconciliation, or being kept safe. It may point to his birth coming after her husband was reconciled to the Lord, or after his safe return from captivity in Babylon. Such advantages would increase Amon's responsibility, and so make his guilt greater.
One writer puts the principle as a question:
But suppose the son treats it lightly, and uses it as an encouragement to walk in the same path. Is it not just that a still heavier punishment should fall on that son? He had the conscience that all people share. On top of that, he had a special witness in his own family. A child's heart should have felt that witness and thought about it deeply, so as never to repeat its evil.
The record of Amon's reign ends quickly:
Amon's short reign of two years is marked by the same ungodliness as his father's... Amon "abandoned the LORD, the God of his fathers"; that is his sentence. For him there was no place left for repentance. He died a violent death, just like the last kings of Israel.
- Walked — Two family paths lay before Amon: his wicked father's and his godly grandfather's. He chose his father's.
- Served — He copied Manasseh's idolatry but not Manasseh's repentance. He sinned more and more and died in his sins.
- Restored — Bringing back idols his father had thrown down treated God as though He had never spoken. Commentators call that worse than setting up new ones.
- Abandoned — The word assumes he once professed to worship God. A godly upbringing raised his responsibility; it did not lower it.
- Ended — A son who watches his father's punishment and pardon, then copies the sin, is guilty twice over. Amon's two years closed with no repentance and a violent death.