2 Kings 21:12
Therefore thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Behold, I am bringing such evil upon Jerusalem and Judah, that whosoever heareth of it, both his ears shall tingle. Therefore thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Behold, I am bringing such evil upon Jerusalem and Judah, that whosoever heareth of it, both his ears shall tingle.
The verse belongs to the reign of Manasseh in Judah within a nearly 300-year period running in Israel from Joram through Jehu's dynasty to Hoshea, when the kingdom of Israel ended by Assyrian invasion and the tribes were carried captive, and in Judah from Ahaziah through Jehoahaz, with Joel, Isaiah, Micah, Jeremiah, Zephaniah and Nahum active. It belongs to Judah's spotted record in which righteous, faithful rule brought prosperity and turning from God to gross idolatry brought calamity upon rulers and people. It stands in the closing history of Kings dealing with the wicked and weak reigns of Judah, in the record of the wicked Manasseh followed by his wicked son Amon and then by the good reformer Josiah, whose bright reformation supported by godly priests and counselors and whose piety arose against that background of a nation plunged into heathenism under Manasseh with that idolatry continuing under Amon. It belongs to the events leading toward Judah's Babylonian captivity, meaning evil and captivity would come upon Jerusalem and Judah because Judah, with Israel's sad lesson of departure from God through idolatry and captivity before it, followed on in the same idolatrous course until captivity came to her.
It is the word of the LORD God of Israel spoken by His prophets because of all Manasseh's great evil in rebuilding the high places Hezekiah destroyed, rearing altars for Baal, making a grove, worshiping all the host of heaven, making his son pass through the fire, observing times, using enchantments, dealing with familiar spirits and wizards, seducing Judah to do more evil than the nations the LORD destroyed, and shedding very much innocent blood till Jerusalem was filled from one end to another. Because of that wicked rule the Lord warns through prophets during his reign that He is bringing such evil, captivity, severe calamity and shocking judgment upon Jerusalem and Judah that the report of it will make both ears of everyone who hears tingle with astonishment and shock. The ear-tingling report is an image of startling news applied to ask whether criticisms of church practices should alarm Christians about the church's fate. That ear-tingling evil threatened upon Jerusalem and Judah is the measure of the evil brought upon the country by Rome's aspiration to political control, seen in Irish-Roman-Catholic-Democratic rule of New York, and removing that evil requires counteracting Rome's efforts and protecting life, property and liberty, something more than labor for the conversion of Romanists.