Manasseh of Judah
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Manasseh of Judah (687 - c. 642 B.C.E.) was the king of Judah and only son and successor of Hezekiah. His mother's name is given as Hephzibah.
Beginning his reign at the age of 12, Manasseh ruled Judah longer than any other king. A vassal of the Assyrian Empire, he reversed the monotheistic reforms of his father, for which he is severely condemned by the biblical writers, who condemn him as an idolater who killed his religious opponents and even sacrificed his own son to a pagan deity.
The Book of Chronicles, however, reports that Manasseh later repented of his sins after being taken captive by the Assyrians, and the deuter-canonical Prayer of Manasseh records his supposed supplication to God, in which he touchingly begs for forgiveness.
Background
In the time of Manasseh's father Hezekiah, Sennacherib, the king of Assyria conquered in the northern kingdom of Israel and took every city of Judah except Jerusalem. Judah thus became a tribute-paying vassal of Assyria and remained so during the reigns of the Assyrian kings Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal. In religious policy, Hezekiah had once tolerated the worship of god other than Yahweh, but under the influence of the prophet Isaiah, he instituted a major religious reform, not only banning Baal worship in the capital, but also destroying at least some of the Israelite high places outside of Jerusalem, and even doing away with the famous bronze serpent constructed by Moses on the grounds that it had become on object of idolatry.
Reign
According to 2 Kings 21:1 Manasseh was still a boy of 12 at his father's death. His reign of 53 years is the longest recorded in the annals of Judah. The Assyrian kings continued to take an active interest in their western domains shown by their sending emissaries to visit Hezekiah after an illness (2 Kings 20:12) and their settlement of colonists in Samaria (Ezra 4). Both Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal carried out military campaigns against Egypt to the south and maintained protracted sieges of the strong cities of Pheonicia to Judah's north.
Religious reforms
Though such a long reign as Manasseh's would normally be seen as a sign of God's favor, he is strongly condemned by the biblical writers. He reversed the religious reforms of his father Hezekiah, by granting his people the freedom to worship other gods than Yahweh, even in the Temple of (Jerusalem 2 Kings 21) and reinstated the high places that Hezekiah had closed or destroyed. The writer in Kings emphasizes three deplorable details of the reign of Manasseh: the religious reaction which followed his accession, its extension by the free adoption of foreign cults, and the bitter persecution of the prophetic party which opposed his reforms. This writer accuses him in the most vehement terms not only of idolatry but murder and the sacrifice[1] of one of his own sons:
He rebuilt the high places his father Hezekiah had destroyed; he also erected altars to Baal and made an Asherah pole, as Ahab king of Israel had done. He bowed down to all the starry hosts and worshiped them. He sacrificed his own son in the fire, practiced sorcery and divination, and consulted mediums and spiritists... Manasseh led (the people) astray, so that they did more evil than the nations the Lord had destroyed before the Israelites... Manasseh also shed so much innocent blood that he filled Jerusalem from end to end. (2 Kings 2-16)
During Manasseh's nearly half-century reign the popular worship was a medley of native and foreign cults, the influence of which was slow to disappear (Ezek. 8). The prophets were reportedly put to the sword (Jer. 2:30), and "innocent blood" reddened the streets of Jerusalem (2 Kings 24:4). For many decades those who sympathized with prophetic ideas were in constant peril. An apocryphal tradition preserved in the Lives of the Prophets and rabbinical literature holds that among the martyrs during Manasseah's reign was the prophet Isaiah, who was cut in two with a saw.
The Chronicler declares that as punishment for Judah's sins under Manasseh, God sent "the captains of the host of the King of Assyria," who took Manasseh in chains to Babylon (2 Chron. 33:11). This implies that Manasseh must have engaged in some kind of revolt against Assyria or refused to pay the customary tribute. However, in 2 Kings, written within a century or so of Manasseh's death, there is no hint of revolt or war between Judah and Assyria.
Repentance
Chronicles goes on to report that, having truly repented, Manasseh was restored to his throne. He then demonstrated the genuineness of his change of heart by devoting himself to measures of defense, administration, and monotheistic religious reform.
He got rid of the foreign gods and removed the image from the temple of the Lord, as well as all the altars he had built on the temple hill and in Jerusalem; and he threw them out of the city. 1Then he restored the altar of the Lord and sacrificed fellowship offerings and thank offerings on it, and told Judah to serve the Lord, the God of Israel. The people, however, continued to sacrifice at the high places, but only to the Lord their God. (2 Cnron. 33:15-17)
The deuterocanonical Prayer of Manasseh purports to be a penitential prayer spoken by Manasseh, in which he declares:
You, O Lord, God of the righteous, have not given repentance for the righteous, for Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, who had not sinned against You, but you have given repentance for me, the sinner. For I have sinned more than the number of sand of the sea... I have set up abominations and multiplied provocations (idols). And now I bend the knee of my heart, begging for Your clemency. I have sinned, O Lord, I have sinned, and I know my lawless deeds. I am asking, begging You: forgive me, O Lord, forgive me! Do not destroy me with my lawless deeds, nor for all ages keep angry with me, nor condemn me to the depths of the earth, for You, O Lord, are the God of those who repent.
Such accounts accounts, however, are difficult to square with contemporary writing of Jeremiah who insisted that the crying need in the days of Josiah, Manasseh's immediate successor, was religious reform. Jeremiah also declared (Jer. 15:4) that Manasseh's sins had yet to be expiated: "I will make (my people) abhorrent to all the kingdoms of the earth because of what Manasseh son of Hezekiah king of Judah did in Jerusalem."
After his nation's longest reign, Manasseh died and was buried at Uzza, the "garden of his own house" (2 Kings 21:17, 18; 2 Chr. 33:20), not in the City of David, among his ancestors.
Legacy
Despite his reported repentance, Manasseh has gone down in history as the worst of the kings of Judah, for whose sins the nation was punished by the Babylonian exile, despite the best efforts of his grandson, Josiah, the rectify the situation.
The Book of Kings (2 Kings 21:11-14) reports a prophecy to the effect that "Manasseh king of Judah has committed... detestable sins. He has done more evil than the Amorites who preceded him and has led Judah into sin with his idols. Therefore this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: I am going to bring such disaster on Jerusalem and Judah that the ears of everyone who hears of it will tingle... I will wipe out Jerusalem as one wipes a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down. I will forsake the remnant of my inheritance and hand them over to their enemies."
Even Josiah, whom the Bible praises as the greatest king since David, could not turn away God's wrath: "Neither before nor after Josiah was there a king like him who turned to the Lord as he did—with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his strength, in accordance with all the Law of Moses. Nevertheless, the Lord did not turn away from the heat of his fierce anger, which burned against Judah because of all that Manasseh had done to provoke him to anger." (2 Kings 23:25-26.)
A similar explanation is given for military raids during Jehoiakim's reign: "The Lord sent Babylonian, Aramean, Moabite, and Ammonite raiders against him... Surely these things happened to Judah according to the Lord's command, in order to remove them from his presence because of the sins of Manasseh and all he had done. (2 Kings 24 24:1-3)
| House of David Cadet Branch of the Tribe of Judah | ||
|---|---|---|
| Regnal Titles
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| Preceded by: Hezekiah |
King of Judah Albright: 687 B.C.E. – 642 B.C.E. Thiele: 687 B.C.E. – 643 B.C.E. Galil: 697 B.C.E. – 642 B.C.E. |
Succeeded by: Amon |
Notes
- ↑ The phrase "He made his own son pass through the fire" is normally taken to mean a human sacrifice, although it may also be interpreted as an ordeal of fire in which the victim survives.
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This entry incorporates text from the public domain Easton's Bible Dictionary, originally published in 1897.
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