“Put a hook in his nose”
the military commanders of the king of Assyria, who captured Manasseh, put a hook in his nose, bound him with bronze shackles, and took him to Babylon. (2 Chronicles 33:11 BSB)
What it sounds like today
A vivid, perhaps exaggerated description of an arrest.
The cultural key
The detail is literal Assyrian practice, not hyperbole. Assyria's palace reliefs and royal inscriptions depict prisoners of war, including defeated kings, led on a leash by a hook or ring driven through the nose or lower lip, a deliberate ritual of total humiliation. Here that treatment falls on Manasseh, the worst of Judah's kings, hauled to Babylon like an animal on a tether. The same image had earlier been thrown back at Assyria's own king Sennacherib, whom the LORD vowed to lead home by 'My hook in your nose' (2 Kings 19:28); now the humiliation lands on a wicked king of Judah instead. In Chronicles it becomes the rock bottom from which Manasseh, astonishingly, repents.
Recovered meaning
The 'hook in the nose' is literal Assyrian practice for parading captive kings, and here Judah's most wicked king is dragged to Babylon by it. The humiliation Assyria was famous for becomes the low point from which Manasseh turns back to God.