Manasseh

Manasseh is a Hebrew personal name borne in Scripture by several men, most prominently Joseph's firstborn son and the son of Hezekiah who became king of Judah; it also names the tribe descended from Joseph's son, whose members are called Manassites, and it appears in Greek form as Manasses.

The text presents the patriarch Manasseh chiefly through his father and grandfather. In Genesis 48:15–16 Jacob blesses Joseph's two sons together, invoking "the God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked" and "the angel who has redeemed me from all evil," and asks that his name be named on them, so that Ephraim and Manasseh are counted among the fathers of Israel rather than as Joseph's sons only. Deuteronomy 33:17 sets the tribes in poetic parallel — "the ten thousands of Ephraim" and "the thousands of Manasseh" — giving Manasseh the lesser figure. Historically, Manasseh was one of the two Joseph tribes, and 1 Chronicles 5:26 records that the half-tribe of Manasseh was among the peoples deported by Assyria under Pul and Tilgath Pilneser, taken to Halah, Habor, Hara, and the river Gozan.

The better-known Manasseh is the Judean king, remembered in the text for cultic offense. 2 Kings 21:6 says he made his son pass through the fire, practiced sorcery and enchantments, and dealt with those who had familiar spirits and with wizards, doing "much evil in Yahweh's sight." 2 Chronicles 33:6 repeats the charge and locates the child sacrifice in the valley of the son of Hinnom, and 2 Chronicles 33:10 adds that "Yahweh spoke to Manasseh and to his people, but they didn't listen." Isaiah 9:21 uses the tribal name for internecine strife within Israel: "Manasseh eating Ephraim and Ephraim eating Manasseh."

The two prose accounts diverge in a way readers have long noticed. Kings records no repentance and ends its verdict on Manasseh's sin; Chronicles tells of Assyrian army captains who took him in chains to Babylon, of his humbling and prayer in distress, and of his restoration to Jerusalem, concluding, "Then Manasseh knew that Yahweh was God" (2 Chronicles 33:11–13), with 2 Chronicles 33:19 pointing to a written prayer and to the history of Hozai. Christian traditions read this difference differently: some see in Chronicles a deliberate witness that no guilt puts a penitent beyond God's mercy, others weigh the Kings account as the settled assessment of his reign, and some treat the divergent emphases as complementary rather than contradictory. A related difference concerns the extra-canonical Prayer of Manasses, which Orthodox and some Catholic traditions receive among the books of the church while Protestant Bibles do not; the canonical text itself preserves only the notice that such a prayer existed.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.