of Minasi sar mat (ir) Jaudi, Manasseh, king of Judah.*

* We als o recall here that Esarhaddon transported a fresh colony to Samaria (Ezra 4:2, 10).

But the capture of Manasseh by the Assyrian captains, and his deportation to Babylon, recorded in

2 Chronicles 33:11, seems to have taken place not in the reign of Esarhaddon, but in that of his

successor, Asurbanipal (the Sardanapalus of classical writers), when his brother Samas -sum-ukln,

the viceroy of Babylon, involved among other countries also Phoenicia and Palestine in his

rebellion. And although the ordinary residence of Asurbanipal was in Nineveh, we have not only

reason to believe that after his assumption of the dignity of king of Babylon, he temporarily

resided in that city, but monumental evidence of it in his reception there of ambassadors with

tributary presents. Lastly, we find the exact counterpart alike of this, that Manasseh was carried to

Babylon with "hooks,"* and "bound in fetters," and then afterwards restored to his kingdom, in the

Assyrian record of. precisely the same mode of deportation and of the s ame restoration by

Asurbanipal of Necho of Egypt.**

* This is the correct rendering.

** Comp. Schrader, u.s., pp. 366 -372.

Holy Scripture tracing this restoration - not, as in the Assyrian inscription, to its secondary cause

"the mercy of the king" - but to its real source, connects it with the repentance and prayer of

Manasseh in his distress (2 Chronicles 33:12, 13). That in such circumstances the son of Hezekiah,

with the remembrance of the Divine deliverance of his father in his mind, should have recognized

the folly and guilt of his conduct, humbled himself, and prayed unto the LORD* - seems so

natural as scarcely to require confirmation.

* "The Prayer of Manasseh" in the Apocr., is certainly of late date, and not even received as

canonical by the Romish Church. The curious reader is referred to Fritzsche, Handb. zu d. Apokr.,

I., pp. 157 -164, to the literature there mentioned, and to Fabricius, Cod. Pseudepigr, I., 1100-1102.

Yet there is such, at least of his return to Jerusalem, in the historical notice of his additions to the

fortifications of Jerusalem (2 Chronicles 33:14). And if his abolition of the former idolatry, and

restoration of the service of Jehovah, seem not consistent with the measures that had afterwards to

be adopted by his grandson Josiah, we have to remember that between them intervened the wicked

reign of Amon; that Manasseh seems rather to have put aside than destroyed idolatry; and that the

sacred text itself indicates the superficiality and incompleteness of his reformation (2 Chronicles

The events just recorded must have taken place near the close of this reign, which extended over

the exceptional period of fifty-five years. As Holy Scripture refers to his sins as extreme and

permanent instance of guilt (2 Kings 23:26; 24:3; Jeremiah 15:4), so, on the other hand, Jewish

tradition dwells upon the repentance of Manasseh and the acceptance of his prayer, as the fullest

manifestation of God's mercy, and the greatest encouragement to repentant sinners.* And, in

truth, the threatened judgment upon Jerusalem was deferred for more than half a century. So it was

in peace that Manasseh laid himself to sleep.** He was buried in a garden attached to his palace,

which popularly bore the name of "the garden of Uzza."***

* The Talmud (Sanh. 103a) says that to deny that Manasseh had share in the world to come, would

be to weaken the hands of penitents. As justice demanded that heaven should be closed against

him, the Almighty opened for him a hole in the firmament. In the Midras h (Deba. R. 2) a

legendary account is realistically given, first of the idol he set up; then how, when he was being

burned by the Assyrians, and found all his gods failed him, he cried to the LORD; lastly, how the

ministering angels had shut up all the win dows of heaven against his prayer, but God had bored

for it a hole under the throne of His glory for the encouragement of penitents to all time.