_MANASSEH_
B.C. 686-641
2 KINGS xxi. 1-16
"Shall the throne of wickedness have fellowship with Thee,
That frameth mischief by statute?
They gather themselves in troops against the soul of the righteous,
And condemn the innocent blood."--PSALM xciv. 20, 21.
"Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind
exceeding small;
Though with patience long He waiteth, with exactness grinds
He all."
Manasseh was born after Hezekiah's recovery from his terrible illness.
He was but twelve years old when he began to reign. Of his mother
Hephzibah we know nothing, nor of the Zechariah who was her father;
but perhaps Isaiah in one passage (lxii. 4) may refer to her name, "My
delight is in her."[624] The son of Hezekiah and Hephzibah was the
worst of all the kings of Judah, and had the longest reign.
The tender age of Manasseh when he came to the throne may perhaps
account for the fact that the "forgetfulness" which his name
implied[625] was not a forgetting of other sorrows, but of all that
was noble and righteous in the attempted reformation which had been
the main religious work of his father's life. In Judah, as in England,
a king was not supposed to be of age until he was eighteen.[626] For
six years Manasseh must have been to a great extent under the
influence of his regents and counsellors.
There always existed in Jerusalem, even in the best times, a
heathenising party, and it was, unfortunately, composed of princes and
aristocrats who could bring strong influence to bear upon the
king.[627] They did not deny Jehovah, but they did not recognise Him
as the sole or the supreme God of heaven and earth. To them He was the
local deity of Israel and Judah. But there were other gods, the gods
of the nations, and their aim always was to recognise the existence of
these deities and to pay homage to their power. If their favour could
not be purchased except by their immediate votaries, at least their
anger might be averted. These politicians advocated a fatal and
incongruous syncretism, or at least an unlimited tolerance for heathen
idols, for which they could, unhappily, quote the precepts and example
of the Wise King, Solomon. If any one questioned their views as a
dangerous idolatry, and an insult to
"Jehovah thundering out of Zion, throned
Between the cherubim,"
they had but to point from the walls of Jerusalem to the confronting
summit of Olivet, where still remained the shrines which the son of
David had erected three centuries earlier to Chemosh, and Milcom, and
Ashtoreth, who, since his day, had always found, even in Jerusalem,
some worshippers, open or secret, to acknowledge their divinity.
And these worldlings, in their tolerance for the intolerable, could
always appeal to two powerful instincts of man's fallen
nature--sensuality and fear--"lust hard by hate." There was something
in the worship of Baal-Peor and of Moloch which appealed to the
undying ape and tiger in the unregenerate human heart.
The true worship of Jehovah is exactly that form of religion which man
finds it least easy to render to Him--the religion of pure morality.
Services, rites, functions, look like religious diligence, and readily
secure a reverent outward devotion. Even self-maceration, fasts, and
flagellation are a cheap way of escaping the "endless torments" which
always loom so hugely in terrifying superstition.
Such superstitions are children of the fear and faithlessness which hath
torment. They are the corruptions with which every form of false
religion, and with which also a corrupt and perverted Christianity, are
always tainted. And they demand the easy expiation of physical ritual.
But all the best and most spiritual teachers of Scripture--alike the
Hebrew Prophets and the Christian Apostles--are at one with the Lord
Christ in perpetual insistence on the truth that "mercy is better than
sacrifice," and that true religion consists in that good mind and good
life which are the sole proof of genuine sincerity.
If Jehovah would but be contented with gifts, men would gladly offer
Him thousands of rams and tens of thousands of rivers of oil. But the
prophets taught that He was above all mean bribes, and that such
offerings never could be anything to One whose were all the beasts of
the forests and the cattle upon a thousand hills. It was not easy,
then, to bribe such a God, or to make Him a respecter of persons.
How easy, again, would it be, if He would even accept human
sacrifices! A child was but a child. How easy to kill a child, and
place it in the brazen arms which sloped over the fiery cistern!
Moloch and Chemosh were supremely to be won by such holocausts; and
surely Moloch and Chemosh must be lords of power! But here again the
prophets of Jehovah stepped in, and said that it was of no avail with
the High, the Holy, the Merciful, to give even our firstborn for our
transgressions, or the fruit of the body for the sin of the soul.
Asceticism, then--occasional fasting, severe self-deprivations--surely
the gods would accept these? And they were as nothing compared to the
burden of sin and the agony of conscience! Baal and Asherah could
command agonised devotees, and could approve of them. By Jehovah and
His prophets such bodily service is discouraged and forbidden.
Pleasure, then?--the consecration of the natural impulses, the
devotion in religious cultus of the passions and appetites of the
flesh--why should that be so abhorrent to Jehovah? Other deities
exulted in licentiousness. Was not the temple of Astarte full of her
women-worshippers and of her eunuchs? Was there no fascination in the
voluptuous allurements, the orgiastic dances, the stolen waters, the
bread eaten in secret, when not only was the conscience lulled by the
removal therefrom of all sense of guilt and degradation, but such
orgies were even crowned with merit, as part of an acceptable worship?
After all, there was "a fascination of corruption" in these idols of
gold and jewels, of lust and blood!
How stern, how cold, how bare, by comparison, was the moral law which
only said, "Thou shalt not," and emphasised its prohibition with the
unalterable sanctions, "This do, and thou shalt live"; "Do it not, and
thou shalt die"! What could they make of a religion which was so
eloquently silent as to the meritoriousness of ritual?
And how chill and simple and dreary was that which--according to
Micah--Jehovah had shown to be good, and which He required of every
man,--which was nothing more than to do justly, and to love mercy, and
to walk humbly with God!
And what right had the prophets--so asked these apostates--to lord it
over God's heritage in this way? Solomon was the greatest king of
Israel and Judah; and Solomon had never been so exclusive in his
religionism, though he had built the Temple of the Lord; nor Rehoboam;
nor the great Phœnician Queen Athaliah; nor the cultivated and
æsthetic Ahaz; nor, in the kingdom of Israel, the lordly warrior Ahab;
nor the splendid and long-lived victor Jeroboam II. Had not Manasseh
plenty of examples of religious syncretism, to which he might appeal
in the joy of his youthful age?
Not impossibly there lay in the background another reason why the
young king might be inclined to listen to these evil counsellors.
Micah may still have been living; but of Isaiah we hear no more.
Probably he was dead. It is not recorded that he delivered any
prophecy during the reign of Manasseh, nor is it certain that he
outlived the former king. Tradition, indeed, in later days, asserted
that he had confronted Manasseh, and been doomed to death; that he had
taken refuge in a cedar tree, and in that cedar had been sawn asunder;
but the tradition is wholly without a vestige of authority. One of
Micah's sternest oracles was perhaps uttered in the days of
Manasseh.[628] But Micah was only a provincial prophet of
Moresheth-Gath. He never moved in the midst of princes as Isaiah had
done, or possessed a tithe of the authority which had rested for so
many years on the shoulders of his mighty contemporary.
Moreover--so the heathen party might suggest--had not Isaiah's
prophecies been falsified by the result? Had he not distinctly
promised and pledged his credit to two things? and had not both turned
out to be unworthy of reliance?
i. Surely he had prophesied the utter downfall of the Assyrians. And it
was true that after his disaster on the confines of Egypt, Sennacherib
had fled in haste to Nineveh, and his occupations with rebels on his own
frontiers had left Judah unmolested, and he had been murdered by his
sons. But, on the other hand, in no sense of the word had Assyria
fallen. On the contrary, she had never been more powerful. Not one of
his predecessors had seemed more irresistible than Esarhaddon. He was
undisputed king of Babylon and of Nineveh. There would be no more
embassies from Merodach-Baladan, or any revolted viceroy! And rumour
would early begin to narrate that Esarhaddon had not forgotten the
catastrophe at Pelusium, but intended to avenge it, and to teach Egypt
the forgotten lessons of Raphia (B.C. 720) and Altaqu (B.C. 701).
ii. And as for Judah, where was the golden Messianic age which Isaiah
had promised? Where did they see the Divine Prince whom he had
foretold, or the lion lying down with the lamb, and the child laying
his hand on the cockatrice's den?
All this, they would argue, had greatly shaken Isaiah's prophetic
authority. Judah was a mere vassal--safe only in so far as she
remained a vassal, and did not join Tyre or any other rebellious
power, but abode safe under the shadow of Assyria's mighty wings.
Was it not, then, as well to look facts in the face? to accept things
as they were? And--so they would argue, with false plausibility--since
the triumph, after all, had remained with the gods of the nations,
might it not be as well to dethrone Jehovah from His exclusive
dominion, and at least to propitiate the potent and less-exacting
deities, the charming _Dî faciles_ who smiled at lewd aberrations, and
even flung over them the glamour of devotion?
With these bolder renegades would be the whole body of the priests of
the _bamoth_. Those old sanctuaries had been repressed by Hezekiah
without any compensation; for in those days life-interests were
little, or not at all, regarded. Multitudes of priests and Levites
must have been flung out of employment and reduced to poverty by the
recent religious revolution. It is not likely that they bore without a
murmur the obliteration of forms of worship sanctioned by immemorial
custom, or that they made no efforts to procure the re-establishment
of what the people loved.
Thus a vast weight of evil influence was brought to bear upon the
boy-king; and it was also the more powerful because repeated
indications exist that, while the king was nominally a despot, and was
surrounded with external observance, the real control of affairs was,
to a large extent, in the hands of an aristocracy of priests and
princes, except when the king was a man of great personal force.
Manasseh went over to these retrogressionists heart and soul, and he
contentedly remained a tributary of Assyria. Even when Esarhaddon's
forces marched to the chastisement of Egypt, he felt secure in his
allegiance to the dominant tyrant of Babylon and Nineveh, whose
interest it would be not to disturb a faithful subject.
There followed a reaction, an absolute rebound from the old
monotheistic strictness and righteousness. The nation emancipated
itself from the moral law as with a shout of relief, and plunged into
superstition and licentiousness. The reign of Manasseh resembled at
once the recrudescence of Popery in the reign of Mary Tudor, with its
rekindling of the fires of Smithfield, and the foul orgies of
debauchery at the Restoration of 1660, when human nature, loving
degraded licence better than strenuous liberty, flung away the noble
freedom of Puritanism for the loathly mysteries of Cotytto. The age of
Manasseh resembled that of Charles II., in the famous description of
Lord Macaulay. "Then came days never to be recalled without a blush,
the days of servitude without loyalty, and sensuality without love, of
dwarfish talents and gigantic vices, the paradise of cold hearts and
narrow minds, the golden age of the coward, the bigot, and the slave.
In every high place worship was paid to Belial and Moloch, and England
propitiated these obscene and cruel idols with the blood of her best
and bravest children." Sensuous intoxication is in all cases closely
connected with fiendish cruelty, and the introducer of voluptuous
idolatries naturally became the first persecutor of the true religion.
1. The first step of the king, and probably the one which the people
welcomed most, was the restoration of the chapelries under the trees
and on the hills, which, more strenuously than any of his
predecessors, Hezekiah had at least attempted to put down. For this
step Manasseh might have pleaded the sanction of ages to which the
Book of Deuteronomy had either been wholly unknown, or during which
its laws had become as utterly forgotten as though they had never
existed. To many worshippers these old shrines had become extremely
precious. They felt it to be either an actual impossibility, or at the
best intolerably burdensome, to make their way by long, dreary, and
difficult journeys to Jerusalem, when they desired to pay the most
ordinary rites of worship. They knew no reason, and had never known of
any reason, why Jehovah should be worshipped in one Temple only. All
their religious instincts led them the other way. They could point to
the example of all the highly honoured saints who had worshipped God
at Gilgal, Shechem, Bethel, Hebron, Beersheba, Kedesh, Gibeah, and
many another shrine; and of all the saintly kings who had not dreamt
of interfering with such free worship. Why should Jerusalem monopolise
all sanctity? It might be a politic view for kings to maintain, and
highly profitable for priests to establish; but none of their great
prophets, not even the princely Isaiah, had said one syllable against
the innocent high places of Jehovah. In those days there were no
synagogues. The extinction of the high places doubtless seemed to many
of the people an extinction of religion in daily life, and they were
more than half disposed to agree with the Rabshakeh that Jehovah was
offended by what they regarded as a burdensome, unwise, and sweeping
innovation.--If it be necessary to answer arguments which might have
seemed natural, against a custom which might have seemed innocent, it
must suffice to say that it was the chief mission of Israel to keep
alive among the nations of the world the knowledge of the One True
God, and that, amid the constant temptations to accept the gods of the
heathen as they were adored in groves and on high places, the faith of
Israel could no longer be kept pure except by the Deuteronomic
institution of one central and exclusive shrine.
2. But Manasseh did far worse than rehabilitate the worship at the high
places which his father had discouraged. "He reared up altars for
Baal,[629] and made an Asherah, as did Ahab, King of Israel." This was
the first bad element of the new cosmopolitan eclecticism. It involved
the acceptance of the Phœnician nature-worship with its manifold
abominations. The people had grown familiar with it under Athaliah (2
Kings xi. 18), and under Ahaz (2 Chron. xxviii. 2); but Manasseh, as we
infer from the account given of Josiah's reformation, had gone further
than either. He had actually ventured to introduce the image of Baal
into the Temple, and to set up the Asherah-pillar in front of it (2
Kings xxiii. 4). Worse even than this, he had erected in the very
Temple (_id._ 7) houses devoted to the execrable _Qedeshim_ (Vulg.,
_effeminati_), in which also the women wove broidered hangings to adorn
the shrines of the idol image, as in the worship of the Assyrian
Mylitta.[630] He, at the same time, displaced the altar and removed the
Ark. To the latter circumstances is perhaps due the Rabbinic legend that
Hezekiah hid the Ark till the coming of the Messiah.
3. To this Phœnician worship he added Sabaism, the worship of the
stars, "all the host of heaven, whom he served." This was an entirely
new phase of idolatry, unknown to the Hebrews till they came in
contact with Assyria.[631] It came rapidly into vogue, and exercised
over their imaginations the spell of a seductive novelty, as we see
from the strong testimony of the prophet Jeremiah.[632] This is why it
is so emphatically forbidden in the Book of Deuteronomy.[633] The king
built altars to the stars of the Zodiac (_Mazzaroth_), both in the
outer court of the Temple, and in the court of the priests, and on
these altars incense or victims were continually burned. He also
introduced or encouraged the introduction into the Temple precincts of
the horses and chariots dedicated to the sun.[634]
When we read of the actual invasion of the Temple-precincts in this as
in preceding and subsequent reigns, we cannot but ask, Were these
atrocities committed with the sanction or with the connivance of the
priests? We are not told. Yet how can it have been otherwise? If the
high priest Azariah could muster eighty priests to oppose King Uzziah,
when he merely wished to burn incense in the Temple, as Solomon had
done before him, and as Ahaz did after him--if Jehoiada could,
according to the Chronicler, muster a perfect army of priests and
Levites to dethrone Athaliah, and could so stir up the people that
they rose _en masse_ to tear down the temple of Baal, and slay Mattan,
his high priest,--how was it possible for Manasseh to perpetrate these
flagrant acts of idolatrous apostasy, if the priests were all ranged
in opposition to his power? Was their authority suddenly paralysed?
Did their influence with the people shrivel into nothing when Hezekiah
had been carried to his tomb? Or did these priests follow the easy and
profitable course which they seem to have followed throughout the
whole history of the kings without an exception?--did they simply
answer the kings according to their idols?
4. Another, and the most hideous, element of the new mixture of cults
was the reintroduction of the ancient Canaanite worship of Moloch with
its human sacrifices. Manasseh, like Ahaz, made his son or, according
to the Chronicler and the Septuagint, "his sons"--pass through the
fire to this grim Ammonite idol in Tophet of the Valley of Hinnom, so
as to leave no chance untried. And herein he was far more inexcusable
than his grandfather; for Ahaz had at least been driven by desperate
extremity to this last expedient, but Manasseh was living, if not in
prosperity, at least in unbroken peace. Moreover, he not only did this
himself, but did his utmost to make a popular institution of
children-sacrifice, so that many practised it in the dreadful valley
and amid the rocks outside Jerusalem.[635]
5. Even this did not suffice him. To these Assyrian, Phœnician, and
Canaanite elements of idolatry he added Babylonian novelties. He
practised augury, and used enchantments, and he dealt with familiar
spirits and wizards, as though without Egyptian necromancy and
Mesopotamian shamanism his eclectic worship would be incomplete.[636]
6. Thus "he wrought much wickedness in the sight of the Lord to
provoke Him to anger." He placed a graven image of his Asherah inside
the Temple, and utterly profaned the sacred house, and seduced his
people "to do more evil than did the nations whom the Lord destroyed
before the children of Israel."
Whatever was the conduct of the priests, the prophets were not silent.
They denounced Manasseh for having done worse than even the ancient
Amorites, and declared that, in consequence of his crimes, God would
bring upon Jerusalem such evil as would cause both the ears of him
that heard it to tingle;[637] that he would stretch over Jerusalem for
ruin the line and the level of Ahab;[638] that He would cast off even
the remnant, and deliver them to their enemies; that He would wipe out
Jerusalem "as a man wipeth a dish, wiping and turning it upside
down."[639]
The finest oracles of Micah (vi. 1-vii. 7) were probably uttered in the
reign of Manasseh, and give the simplest and purest expression to the
supremacy of morality as the one true end and test of religion. Micah is
as indifferent as the Decalogue to all claims of rites, ceremonies, and
outward worship. "Jehovah demands nothing for Himself; all that He asks
is for man: this is the fundamental law of the theocracy."
The apostasies of the king and the denunciation of the prophets thus
came into fierce collision, and led naturally to persecution and
bloodshed. Perhaps in Mic. vii. 1-7 we catch the echoes of the Reign
of Terror. The king resorted to violence, using, no doubt, the
tyrant's devilish plea of necessity. He made blood run like water in
the streets of Jerusalem from end to end,[640] and in the exaggerated
phrase of Josephus, was _daily_ slaying the prophets.[641] It was
during this persecution, according to Rabbinic tradition, that Isaiah
received the martyr's crown.[642]
And no miracles were wrought to save the martyrs. Elijah and Elisha
had been surrounded with a blaze of miracles, but in Judah no prophet
arose who could so wield the power of Heaven.
At this point the narrative of the historian about Manasseh ends. If
he shared the current opinion of his day, which connected individual
and national prosperity with well-doing, and regarded length of days
as a sign of the favour of Heaven, while, on the other hand,
misfortune and misery invariably resulted from the wrath of Jehovah,
he could not have been otherwise than surprised, and perhaps even
pained, to have to relate that Manasseh reigned fifty-five years. Not
only was his reign longer than that of any other king of Israel or
Judah; not only did he attain a greater age than any of them; but,
further, no calamity seems to have marked his rule. A contented and
protected vassal of Esarhaddon, secure from his attacks, and also
unmolested by the weakened and subjugated nations around him, he would
seem, in the story of the Kings, to have enjoyed an enviable external
lot, and to have presided over a people who were happy, in that,
during his rule, they had no history. But whatever the writer may have
felt, he tells us no more, and lets us see Manasseh sink peacefully
into his grave "in the garden of his own house, in the garden of
Uzza," and leave to his son Amon a peaceful realm and an undisputed
crown. Such a career would undoubtedly perplex and confound all the
preconceived opinions of Jewish orthodoxy. The prosperity of Manasseh
would have presented as great a problem to them as the miseries of
Job. They looked to temporal prosperity as the reward of
righteousness, and to acute misery as the retribution of apostasy and
sin. They had little or no conception of a future which should redress
the balance of apparent earthly inequalities. Alike the sight of
Manasseh's long reign and Josiah's undeserved death in battle would
give a powerful shock to their fixed convictions.
Far different is the end of the story in the Book of Chronicles. The
records of Esarhaddon tell us that in 680 he made an expedition into
Palestine to restore the shaken influence of his father,[643] and
about 647 he mentions among his submissive tributaries the kings of
Tyre, Edom, Moab, Gaza, Ekron, Askelon, Gebal, Ammon, Ashdod, and
Manasseh, King of Judah ("Minasi-sar-Yahudi"), as well as ten princes
of Cyprus. Whether the King of Judah rebelled later on, and intrigued
with Tirhakah, we do not know; but in 2 Chron. xxxiii. 11 we read that
Esarhaddon sent his generals to Jerusalem, took Manasseh by stratagem,
drove rings through his lips, bound him in chains, and brought him to
Babylon, where Esarhaddon was holding his court.[644] We find from the
_Eponym Canon_ that Tyre revolted from Assyria in the tenth year of
Esarhaddon, and Manasseh may have been drawn away to join in the
revolt; or he may have joined Shamash-shum-ukîn, the Viceroy of
Babylon, in his revolt against his brother Assurbanipal. As a rule,
the lot of a conquered vassal at the Assyrian Court was horrible, and
in his utter misery Manasseh repented, humbled himself, and
prayed.[645] His prayer was heard. The despots of Nineveh were
capricious alike in their insults and in their favours, and
Esarhaddon not only pardoned Manasseh, but sent him back to
Jerusalem,[646] thinking that he would be more useful to him there
than in a Babylonian dungeon. After this reprieve he lived like a
penitent and a patriot. Esarhaddon was preparing for his expedition
against Tirhakah, and would not attack a king who was now bound to him
by gratitude as well as fear. But the times were very troublous.
Manasseh prepared for eventualities by building an outer wall on the
west of the city of David, unto Gihon in the Valley, by surrounding
Ophel with a high wall, and by garrisoning the fenced cities.[647] All
this was necessary and patriotic work, considering that Judah might be
attacked by other enemies as well as the Assyrians. She was like a
grain of corn amid the grinding mills of the nations. Media and Lydia
were rising into strong kingdoms. Babylon was becoming daily more
formidable. Dim rumours reached the East of movements among vast hosts
of Cimmerian and Scythian barbarians. Jerusalem had no human strength
for war. She could only rely upon her battlements, on the natural
strength of her position, and on the protection of her God. Almost in
the last year of Manasseh, the powerful Psammetichus I., king of a now
united Egypt, made an assault on Ashdod; but he did not venture on the
difficult task of besieging Jerusalem.
The religious reformation of Manasseh attested the sincerity of his
amendment. He flung out the Asherah from the Temple, put away the
strange gods, destroyed the altars, burnt sacrifices to God, and used
all his power to restore the worship of Jehovah. He did not, however,
destroy the high places. For this story the Chronicler refers to "the
words of Chozai,"[648] according to the present text, which some
suppose to have meant "the story of the Seers." He also refers to a
prayer of Manasseh, which cannot of course be the Greek forgery of the
second or third century which goes by that name in the Apocrypha.[649]
His repentance doubtless secured his own salvation. "Whoso saith
'Manasseh hath no part in the world to come,'" said Rabbi Johanan,
"discourageth the penitent";--but the partial reformation was too late
to save his land.
Is this a literal history, or an edifying Haggadah? The non-historical
character of the story is maintained by De Wette, Graf, Nöldeke, and
many others. Both views have been taken. This we can, at any rate,
assert--that there seems to be nothing in the story which is
inconsistent with probability. The Chronicler may have derived it from
genuine documents or traditions, though it is difficult to account for
the silence of the elder and more trustworthy historian. Nor is it
only his silence for which we have to account; it is the continuance
of his positive statements. It would be, in any case, a strange
conception of history which, after narrating a man's crimes, omitted
alike the retribution which befell him on account of them, the
heartfelt penitence for the sake of which they were forgiven, and the
seriously earnest endeavour to undo at least something of the evil
which he had done. Not only does the historian make these omissions,
but in no subsequent allusion to Manasseh does he so much as indicate
that he is aware of his amendment.[650] He says that Amon "did evil in
the sight of the Lord, as his father Manasseh did."[651] He speaks of
the altars to the hosts of heaven which Manasseh had made in the two
courts of the Temple as still standing in the reign of Josiah, though
the Chronicler tells us that Manasseh had cast them all out of the
city.[652] He says that, notwithstanding all that Josiah did, "the
Lord turned not from the fierceness of His great wrath, because of all
the provocations that Manasseh had provoked Him withal,"[653] and that
on this account God cast off Jerusalem. Never, even by the most
distant allusions, does he refer to Manasseh's captivity, his prayer,
his penitence, or his counter-efforts. Had he been aware of these, his
silence would have been neither generous nor just. Nay, he even leaves
apparent facts at conflict with the Chronicler's story, for he makes
Josiah do all that the Chronicler tells us that Manasseh himself had
done in the removal of his worst abominations.
Even now we have not exhausted the historic difficulties which
surround the repentance of Manasseh. During his reign Jeremiah
received his call, and while still a young boy began his work. Neither
he, nor Zephaniah, nor Habakkuk drop the slightest hint that the
wicked, idolatrous king had ever turned over a new leaf. Jeremiah's
silence is specially difficult to account for. He, too, records
Jehovah's final and irrevocable decree, that He would give up Judah to
death, to exile, and to famine, to the sword to slay, to the dogs to
tear, to the fowls of the heaven and the beasts of the earth to devour
and to destroy.[654] And the cause of the pitiless doom pronounced by
a Judge weary of repenting is "because of Manasseh, the son of
Hezekiah, King of Judah, for that which he did in Jerusalem."[655]
The judgment was not long delayed.
It was the vast movement of the Scythians in Media and Western Asia,
and the rumours of it, which gave to Manasseh and Amon such respite as
they had; and even this respite was full of misery and fear.[656]
FOOTNOTES:
[624] One legend says that Hephzibah was a daughter of Isaiah. Not so
Josephus (_Antt._, X. iii. 1).
[625] See Gen. xli. 51. His name may have referred to the new union
between the Northern and Southern Kingdoms. Comp. 2 Chron. xxx. 6,
xxxi. 1.
[626] Chron. xxxiv. 1-3.
[627] See Zeph. i. 8. Comp. 2 Chron. xxiv. 17; Isa. xxviii. 14; Jer.
v. 5, etc.
[628] Mic. vii. 1-20.
[629] LXX., τῇ Βαά̈λ. The feminine, however, does not imply that Baal
was here worshipped as a female deity, but is probably due to the fact
that later Jews always avoided using the _names_ of idols (from a
misapprehension or too literal view of Exod. xxiii. 13), and therefore
called Baal _Bosheth_ ("shame"), which is feminine. Hence the names
Mephibosheth, Jerubbesheth, Ishbosheth. In Suidas (_s.v._ Μανασσῆς) he
is charged with having set up in the Temple "a four-faced image of
Zeus."
[630] For בָּתִּים, in 2 Kings xxiii. 7, the LXX. read χεττίμ (?).
Grätz, (_Gesch. d. Juden._, ii. 277) suggests בְּנָדִים, "broidered
robes." Ezek. xvi. 16. See Herod., i. 199; Strabo, xvi. 1058; Luc.,
_De Deâ. Syr._, § 6; Libanius, _Opp._, xi. 456, 557; _Ep. of Jeremy_,
43; Döllinger, _Judenthum u. Heidenthum_, i. 431; Rawlinson,
_Phœnicia_, 431.
[631] Chron. xxxiii. 3; 2 Kings xxiii. 5. Movers, _Rel. d. Phöniz._,
i. 65 "In all the books of the Old Testament written before the
Assyrian period no trace of star-worship is to be to found." 2 Kings
xvii. 16.
[632] Jer. vii. 18, viii. 2, xix. 13; Zeph. i, 5.
[633] See Deut. iv. 19, xvii. 3.
[634] 2 Kings xxiii. 11, 12.
[635] See Jer. vii, 31, 32, xix. 2-6, xxxii. 35; Psalm cvi. 37, 38.
[636] Ewald infers from Isa. lvii. 5-9; Jer. ii. 5-13, that he actually
_sought_ for all foreign kinds of worship, in order to introduce them.
[637] 1 Sam. iii. 11; Jer. xix. 3.
[638] Comp. Isa. xxxiv. 11; Lam. ii. 8.
[639] 2 Kings xxi. 13. LXX., ἀλάβαστρος, _al._ πυξίον. The Vulgate
also takes it to mean the obliteration of writing on a tablet: "Delebo
Jerusalem sicut deleri solent tabulæ; et ducam crebrius stylum super
faciem ejus."
[640] 2 Kings xxi. 16; Heb., "from mouth to mouth"; LXX., στόμα εἰς
στόμα; Vulg., _donec impleret Jerusalem usque ad os_. Comp. 2 Kings x.
21.
[641] _Antt._, X. iii, 1: "He butchered alike all the just among the
Hebrews." To this reign of terror some refer Psalm xii. 1; Isa. lvii.
1-4.
[642] This (as I have said) cannot be regarded as certain. Isaiah
began to prophesy in the year that King Uzziah died, sixty years
before Manasseh. It is a Jewish Haggadah. See Gesen on Isa. i., p. 9,
and the Apocryphal "Ascension of Isaiah."
[643] Esarhaddon reigned only eight years, till 668, and then resigned
in favour of his son Assurbanipal. In his reign Psammetichus recovered
Egypt, and put an end to the Dodecarchy. In the reign of his
successor, Assuredililani, Assyria began to decline (647-625).
[644] Comp. Isa. xxxix. 6; Jos., _Antt._, X. iii. 2. The phrase "among
the thorns" means "_with rings_" (comp. Isa. xxx. 28, xxxvii. 29;
Ezek. xxxviii. 4; Amos iv. 2). Assurbanipal says similarly that he
seized Necho, "bound him with bonds and iron chains, hands and feet,"
but afterwards allowed him to return to Egypt (Schrader, ii. 59).
[645] Late and worthless Haggadoth, echoed by still later writers
(Suidas and Syncellus), say he was kept in a brazen cage, fed on bran
bread dipped in vinegar, etc. See _Apost. Constt._, ii. 22: "And the
Lord hearkened to his voice, and there became about him a flame of
fire, and all the irons about him melted." John Damasc., _Parall._,
ii. 15, quotes from Julius Africanus, that while Manasseh was saying a
psalm his iron bonds burst, and he escaped. See _Speakers Commentary_,
on Apocrypha, ii. 363.
[646] Such pardon from a king of Assyria was rare, but not
unparalleled. Pharaoh Necho I. was taken in chains to Nineveh, and
afterwards set free (Schrader, _K. A. T._, p. 371).
[647] See 2 Chron. xxvii. 3. The "fish gate" was, perhaps, a weak
point (Zeph. i. 10).
[648] 2 Chron. xxxiii. 19. Heb., _dibhrî Chozai_; A.V., "the story of
the Seers"; R.V., "in the history of Hozai"; LXX., ἐπὶ τῶν λόγων τῶν
οὐρανιῶν; Vulg., _in sermonibus Hozai_. The elements of doubt
suggested by the name "Babylon," and by the liberation of Manasseh,
have been removed by further knowledge. See Budge, _Hist. of
Esarhaddon_, p. 78; Schrader, _K. A. T._, 369 ff.
[649] Since the Council of Trent this prayer has been relegated to the
end of the Vulgate with 3, 4, Esdras. Verse 8 (the supposed sinlessness
of the Patriarchs) at once shows it to be a mere composition.
[650] 2 Kings xxiii. 12.
[651] 2 Kings xxi. 20.
[652] 2 Chron. xxxiii. 15.
[653] 2 Kings xxiii. 26.
[654] Jer. xv. 1-9.
[655] The later Jews certainly took no account of his repentance. His
name was execrated (see the substitution of Manasseh for Moses in
Judg. xviii. 30), and he was denied all part in the world to come. The
Apocryphal "Prayer of Manasses" has no authority, though it is
interesting (Butler, _Analogy_, pt. ii., ch. v.).
[656] In estimating the Chronicler's story, we cannot wholly forget the
fact that a number of Haggadic legends clustered thickly round the name
of Manasseh in the literature of the later Jews. He is charged with
incest, with the murder of Isaiah, the distortion of Scripture, etc.,
and is represented as having got to heaven, not by real repentance, but
by challenging God on His superiority to idols. The Targum, after 2
Chron. xxxiii. 11, adds, "And the Chaldees made a copper mule, and
pierced it all over with little holes, and put him therein. And when he
was in straits, he cried in vain to all his idols. Then he prayed to
Jehovah and humbled himself; but the angels shut every window and
lattice of heaven, that his prayer might not enter. But forthwith the
pity of the Lord of the world rolled forth, and He made an aperture in
heaven, and the mule burst asunder, and the Spirit breathed on him, and
he forsook all his idols." "No books," says Dr. Neubauer, "are more
subject to additions and various adaptations than popular histories."
See Mr. Ball's commentary (_Speaker's Commentary_, ii. 309, and
_Sanhedrin_, f. 99, 2; 101, 1; 103, 2).
_AMON_[657]
B.C. 641-639
2 KINGS xxi. 19-26
The brief reign of Amon is only a sort of unimportant and miserable
annex to that of his father. As he was twenty-two years old when he
began to reign, he must have witnessed the repentance and reforming zeal
of his father, if, in spite of all difficulties, we assume that
narrative to be historical. In that case, however, the young man was
wholly untouched by the latter phase of Manasseh's life, and flung
himself headlong into the career of the king's earlier idolatries. "He
walked in all the way that his father walked in, and served the idols
that his father served, and worshipped them"--which was the more
extraordinary if Manasseh's last acts had been to dethrone and destroy
these strange gods. He even "multiplied trespass," so that in his son's
reign we find every form of abomination as triumphant as though Manasseh
had never attempted to check the tide of evil. We know nothing more of
Amon. Apparently he only reigned two years.[658] He is the only Jewish
king who bears the name of a foreign--an Egyptian--deity.
For pictures of the state of things in this reign we may look to the
prophets Zephaniah and Jeremiah, and they are forced to use the
darkest colours.
This is Zephaniah's picture:--
"Woe to her that is rebellious and polluted, to the oppressing city!
She obeyed not the voice; she received not instruction;
She trusted not in the Lord; she drew not near to her God.
Her princes in the midst of her are roaring lions;
Her judges are evening wolves; they gnaw not the bones on the morrow.
Her prophets are light and treacherous persons:
Her priests have profaned the sanctuary, they have done violence to
the law."[659]
He tells us that Baal and his black-robed _chemarim_[660] are still
prevalent--that men worshipped on their house-tops the host of heaven,
and swore by "Moloch their king." Therefore would God search Jerusalem
with candles, and would visit the men who had sunk, like thick wine on
the lees, and who said in their infidel hearts, "Jehovah will not do
good, neither will He do evil." He is an Epicurean God, a cypher, a
_fainéant_. "Men make all kinds of fine calculations," says Luther,
"but the Lord God says to them, 'For whom, then, do you hold Me? For a
cypher? Do I sit here in vain, and to no purpose? You shall know that
I will turn their accounts about finely, and make them all false
reckonings.'"
Not less dark is the view of Jeremiah.[661] Like Diogenes in Athens,
Jeremiah in vain searches Jerusalem for a faithful man. Among the poor
he finds brutish obstinacy, among the rich insolent defiance. They
were like fed horses in the morning--lecherous and unruly. They are
slanderers, adulterers, corrupters, murderers. They worship Baal and
strange gods. "They set a trap, they catch men. As a cage is full of
birds, so are their houses full of deceit. They are waxen fat, they
shine; yea, they overpass in deeds of wickedness."[662] "An
astonishment and horror is done in the land; the prophets prophesy
falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means; and My people love
to have it so: and what will ye do in the end thereof?"[663]
"From the least of them even unto the greatest of them every one is
given to covetousness; and from the prophet even unto the priest every
one dealeth falsely. They have treated also the hurt of My people
lightly, saying, 'Peace, peace,' when there is no peace. Were they
ashamed when they had committed abominations? Nay, they were not at
all ashamed, neither could they blush: therefore shall they fall among
them that fall."[664]
The wretched reign ended wretchedly. Amon met the fate of Amaziah and
of Joash. He was murdered by conspirators--by some of his own
courtiers--in his own palace. He was not the victim of any general
rebellion. The people of the land were apparently content with the
existent idolatry, which left them free for lives of lust and luxury,
of greed and gain. They resented the disorder introduced by an
intrigue of eunuchs or court officials. They rose and slew the whole
band of conspirators. Amon was buried with his father in the new
burial-place of the Kings in the garden of Uzza, and the people placed
his son Josiah--a child of eight years old--upon the throne.
FOOTNOTES:
[657] The name Amon is unusual. Some identify it with the name of the
Egyptian sun-god (Nah. iii. 8). If so, we see yet another element of
Manasseh's syncretism, and (as some fancy) an attempt to open
relations with Psammetichus of Egypt. But perhaps the name may be
Hebrew for "Architect" (1 Kings xxii. 26; Neh. vii. 59).
[658] 2 Kings xxi. 19. The LXX. reads "twelve years," but not so
Josephus (_Antt._, X. iv. 1), or 2 Chron. xxxiii. 21.
[659] Zeph. iii. 1-11. Comp. i. 4.
[660] _Chemarim_, 2 Kings xxiii. 5; Hos. x. 5. The root in Syriac
means "to be sad," but Kimchi derives it from a root "to be black."
The Vulgate renders it _æditui_ and _aruspices_.
[661] We are told in the titles of their books that both these
prophets prophesied in the days of Josiah; but such pictures can only
apply to the earliest years of his reign.
[662] See Jer. v., vi., vii., _passim_.
[663] Jer. vi. 13-15.
[664] Jer. v. 30, 31.