Manasseh, Amon and Judgment

Manasseh, twelve, reigns fifty-five years. "He built up again the high places which Hezekiah his father had destroyed; and he reared up altars for Baal, and made a grove, as did Ahab king of Israel; and worshipped all the host of heaven." He builds altars "in the two courts of the house of the LORD," makes his son pass through fire, "observed times, and used enchantments, and dealt with familiar spirits," and sets "a graven image of the grove" in the temple.

The LORD speaks by the prophets: "I am bringing such evil upon Jerusalem and Judah, that whosoever heareth of it, both his ears shall tingle… and I will wipe Jerusalem as a man wipeth a dish, wiping it, and turning it upside down." "Moreover Manasseh shed innocent blood very much, till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another."

Amon his son reigns two years and follows his father's ways. "And the servants of Amon conspired against him, and slew the king in his own house. And the people of the land slew all them that had conspired against king Amon; and the people of the land made Josiah his son king in his stead."

Manasseh in Assyrian records

Esarhaddon (c. 673 BC) lists "Manasseh (Menasi) king of Judah" among twenty-two western kings who supplied building materials for his palace at Nineveh; Ashurbanipal lists him among kings who supported his campaign against Egypt (c. 667 BC). These confirm a long-reigning, loyal Assyrian vassal; they say nothing about his religion or about a captivity.

Two Manassehs

2 Chronicles 33:11–17 says Assyrian commanders took Manasseh to Babylon in chains, he humbled himself and prayed, was restored, and removed the foreign gods. Kings has none of this. The "Prayer of Manasseh," a short penitential prayer, is a later composition found in some Greek and Latin Bibles (in an appendix in the Vulgate, in the Apocrypha in Protestant Bibles, canonical in the Orthodox tradition); it is not Manasseh's recovered prayer. Babylon was under Assyrian rule in this period, so a summons there is possible, but no Assyrian text mentions it.

Innocent blood

Later Jewish tradition (the Martyrdom of Isaiah; Talmud Yevamot 49b) says Manasseh had Isaiah sawn in two; this is legend, possibly echoed in Hebrews 11:37.