Someone once asked Rabbi Akiba how it could be that King Hezekiah, the righteous teacher of Torah, had raised a son as wicked as Manasseh. "Twelve years old was Manasseh when he became king," Scripture records, "and fifty-five years reigned he in Jerusalem, and he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord" (2 Kings 21:1–2).
Akiba answered with another question. Did Hezekiah fail to teach Torah to his son? Impossible. Hezekiah taught Torah to the whole world. Of course he taught his own child. The problem was not Hezekiah's instruction. The problem was Manasseh's attention. "Manasseh paid no attention to his father's precepts," Akiba said, "and neglected the word of God."
Neglect has consequences. Scripture says the Lord spoke to Manasseh and his people, "and they listened not." Only then did God let the armies of Assyria sweep down, capture the king, bind him with fetters of bronze, and drag him off to Babylon. Chronicles records the scene in painful detail: "they took Manasseh with hooks, and bound him with fetters, and carried him to Babylon" (2 Chronicles 33:11).
And there, in exile, the turn happened. "When he was in affliction, he besought the Lord his God, and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers" (2 Chronicles 33:12). God heard him. God permitted Himself to be entreated. God brought Manasseh back to Jerusalem and to his throne.
"Then," as Chronicles concludes, "Manasseh felt conscious that the Lord is indeed the true God." Akiba's point in the midrash is hard to miss. Some of us learn Torah from our parents and hold onto it. Some of us have to be dragged in chains to a foreign city first. Either way, teshuvah, repentance, is never closed.