“He was more beholden to his iron chain, than to his golden crown; the one made him proud, the other made him humble.” (Watson 27)
The next example is that of King Manasseh of Judah (709-643BC). One of the accounts of his reign is 2 Chronicles 33 and there it explains how Manasseh begins that reign by studiously disobeying everything God had ever said to his people: “Manasseh misled Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that they did more evil than the nations whom the Lord had destroyed before the people of Israel.” (2 Chronicles 33:9)
What happens next is the essence of this discussion of evil being worked for good:
10 The Lord spoke to Manasseh and to his people, but they gave no heed. 11 Therefore the Lord brought against them the commanders of the army of the king of Assyria, who took Manasseh captive in manacles, bound him with fetters, and brought him to Babylon. 12 While he was in distress he entreated the favour of the Lord his God and humbled himself greatly before the God of his ancestors. 13 He prayed to him, and God received his entreaty, heard his plea, and restored him again to Jerusalem and to his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord indeed was God. (2 Chronicles 33:10-13)
There is an interesting historical aspect running through this – Manasseh rejects the results of the past. He did the evil acts that had gotten nations destroyed earlier in the book. When he is eventually restored, it is because he ‘humbled himself greatly before the God of his ancestors’. That he prayed sincerely and was restored so quickly after leading vast swathes of people astray must at least give us hope that these kinds of sudden change are possible. This is both a personal and a societal encouragement. Consider what buried ways and rejected fidelities, things that fed and watered us culturally in past generations, could be retrieved by that kind of humiliation and repentance.