[Literature.—Ball, in Wace, ii. pp. 361-371; Nestle,Septuagintastudien, iii. pp. 6 ff. (1899); Ryssel, in Kautzsch, i. pp. 161-171; Ryle, in Charles, I, pp. 612-624.]
[Literature.—Ball, in Wace, ii. pp. 361-371; Nestle,Septuagintastudien, iii. pp. 6 ff. (1899); Ryssel, in Kautzsch, i. pp. 161-171; Ryle, in Charles, I, pp. 612-624.]
The Prayer is a beautiful one, finely constructed, full without being drawn out, and breathing throughout deep personal religion. It is certainly one of the best pieces in the Apocrypha.
After the invocation to God Almighty, “the God of our fathers, of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and of their righteous seed,” comes an acknowledgement of His power and glory; all things tremble before His might, and His wrath against sinners is unendurable; yet His mercy is without limit to the repentant: “Thou art the Lord Most High, of great compassion, long-suffering and abundant in mercy, and repentest Thee for evils of men,” i.e. God in His pity relents because of the sufferings of men, even though brought on them by their own sins. God is then called upon to fulfil His promise of forgiveness to His repentant servant. The supplicator confesses his manifold sins, and protests his sense of unworthiness: “I am not worthy to behold and see the height of heaven by reason of the multitude of mine iniquities.” Then after further confession of sin, and pleading with God to put away Hisanger and to show His mercy in forgiveness, the Prayer concludes with the words: “And I will praise Thee for ever all the days of my life; for all the host of heaven doth sing Thy praise, and Thine is the glory for ever and ever. Amen.”
In 2 Chronicles xxxiii. 12, 13 it is said that when Manasseh “was in distress he besought the Lord his God, and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers. And he prayed unto Him; and He was entreated of him, and heard his supplication, and brought him again unto Jerusalem unto his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord He was God.” Again, in verses 18, 19 of the same chapter the chronicler says: “Now the rest of the acts of Manasseh, and his prayer unto his God, and the words of the seers that spake to him in the name of the Lord, the God of Israel, behold, they are written among the acts of the kings of Israel. His prayer also, and how God was entreated of him ... behold, they are written in the history of Hozai.”[428]The “Prayer of Manasses,” it is usually held, purports to be the prayer to which the chronicler refers; Ball, for example, says: “It is evident from the references in 2 Chronicles xxxiii. 18, 19 that a prayer of Manasseh, written in Hebrew, lay before that writer [i.e. the chronicler]; and we may perhaps venture to add that there is nothing in the form or substance of the Prayer before us which can fairly be alleged against the possibility of its having been ultimately derived from that lost Hebrew original.... We incline to think that the Greek is a free translation from some lost Haggadic narrative, which was itself perhaps founded upon the older document fromwhich the chronicler derived his peculiar details of the history of Manasseh.”[429]This is an attractive theory, but there are some objections to it which will appear as we proceed. Ryle offers an entirely different hypothesis as to its origin: “It is easy to understand that the chronicler’s story of Manasseh’s repentance and prayer, and deliverance from captivity must have produced upon the minds of devout Jews a profound impression. The record of his idolatry and of his persecution of the servants of Jehovah had stamped his name with infamy in the annals of Judah. But side by side with his wickedness were commemorated the unusual length of the king’s reign and the quiet peacefulness of his end. The chronicler’s story of the repentance and conversion of Manasseh provided an explanation of a seemingly unintelligible anomaly. Henceforth his name was associated by Jewish tradition not only with the grossest acts of idolatry ever perpetrated by a king of Judah, but also with the most famous instance of Divine forgiveness towards a repentant sinner. What more remarkable example could be found of the long-suffering compassion of the Almighty, and of His readiness to hear and to answer the supplication of a contrite penitent? Nothing would be more natural than for a devout Jew to endeavour to frame in fitting terms the kind of penitential prayer, which, according to the tradition, Manasseh had poured forth when he was in captivity in Babylon. The sentiments embodied in such a form of petition might conceivably be appropriate to those of his countrymen who had fallen into idolatry, and who might yet be reclaimed from the error of their way.”[430]
Here again, one feels the strength of the argument; but we cannot help believing that there are reasons which militate against the acceptation of this hypothesisas a whole.
In the first place, the “Prayer of Manasses” does not belong to the Septuagint proper; it occurs in Cod. A, and in the much later Cod. T which follows the former and is not independent evidence[431]; but in these it is given at the end of the Psalms in a collection of liturgical canticles.[432]As Ryle says: “The preservation of this short disconnected Psalm may thus, with good reason, be ascribed to the accident of its occurrence in theDidascalia[433]and theApostolical Constitutions.[434]There is no evidence to show that it was ever included in the Septuagint.”[435]If it had been ascribed to Manasseh when first composed we might rightly, on the analogy of the Additions to Esther and to Daniel, expect that it would have been incorporated in the text of Chronicles; that this is not the case suggests, if nothing more, that the name of Manasseh was not originally connected with the Prayer. With the exception of two short sentences there is absolutely nothing in the Prayer which is not appropriate in the mouth of any repentant sinner. These two sentences both occur in verse 10; the first runs: “I am bowed down with many iron bands”; and the second is: “I have set up abominations, and have multiplied detestable things.” These sentences might well refer to Manasseh’s imprisonment and to his idolatrous practices. But regarding the former, it is very questionable whether the words are to be taken literally, as though referring to 2 Chronicles xxxiii. 11, where mention is made of the chains wherewith Manasseh was bound; for the context, in the Prayer, which speaks of transgressions and “the multitude of mine iniquities,” strongly suggests that the “many iron bands” is to be understood metaphorically of the chains ofsin. That the words were so understood in early times is proved by the rendering of the Ethiopic Version, quoted by Ball, which reads here: “I have laboured in fetters of iron,” and continues, “that I might get rest from sin for my soul; but by this also I have not gotten rest.” The first of the sentences under consideration, therefore, would be appropriate in the mouth of any contrite sinner, and therefore does not by any means necessarily refer to Manasseh. With regard to the second sentence, “I have set up abominations, and have multiplied detestable things,” the reference may well be to 2 Chronicles xxxiii. 6, where Manasseh’s evil doings are enumerated. But it is not without significance that we have in this passage the one serious variation in the Greek text of the Prayer; for the uncial T reads here in place of, “I have set up abominations, and have multiplied detestable things,” these words: “I have not done Thy will, nor kept Thy commandments.”[436]The variety of reading just at this particular spot suggests the possibility of the text here having been uncertain, and of having perhaps been altered for a particular purpose.[437]
We are inclined to believe that this Prayer was not originally composed in reference to Manasseh, and that the title, together with the words, “I have set up abominations, and have multiplied detestable things,” was added later, and thus made to refer to Manasseh, this having been done under the influence of the numerous legends concerning this king which seem to have been current.[438]
The only indications of date are those to be derived from the teaching contained in the book, and here everything points to post-Maccabæan times. Thus, in verse 8 it is said: “Thou, therefore, O Lord, that art the God of the righteous, hast not appointed repentance unto the righteous, unto Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, which have not sinned against Thee”; this doctrine of the sinlessness of the patriarchs does not, as far as we know, belong to pre-Maccabæan times. In verse 4 are these words: “Who hast shut up the Deep, and sealed it with Thy terrible and glorious Name, Whom all things do dread”; the supernatural efficacy which is here imputed to the Name of God is likewise a late conception. Further, the whole burden of the Prayer, namely, the need of repentance, is a specifically Pharisaictrait, pointing to post-Maccabæan times. And lastly, the conception of the underworld is a development of the older belief, verse 13 runs: “Nor pass Thou sentence against me when I am in the lowest parts of the earth; for Thou, O Lord, art the God of them that repent.” Although there is no hint of the resurrection here, the very fact that God is conceived of as in any way concerned with the souls of the departed is in itself an advance upon the normal teaching of the Old Testament, and points to a comparatively late date. It is, of course, impossible to assign an exact date to the composition; Ryssel believes that, like a number of other apocryphal works, it was composed during the Maccabæan struggle, with the purpose of urging upon the Jews the efficacy of true repentance as a means of delivering them out of their troubles. This is possible; but the teaching points, as we have said, to a post-Maccabæan time. On the other hand, there is no reason for regarding it as post-Christian; the fact that it is never quoted or referred to until it appearsverbatimin theDidascalia[439](first half of the third centuryA.D.) does not necessarily imply a very late date; its shortness and the character of its contents sufficiently account for its not being mentioned earlier. Some time betweenB.C.100-50 seems as likely a date as any.
There can be no sort of doubt that the writer of this Prayer was a Pharisee, and, moreover, one of the best type; the spirit of true religion breathes through it, and it can only have been written by one who was truly religious. The Judaism which the Prayer reflects is of the Palestinian type, and being a prayer one would expect it to have been originally written in Hebrew, the “holy tongue.” The Greek form in which we now possess this composition does not, it is true, read like a translation excepting here and there (e.g. verse 7, where Charles thinks a “real piece of evidence on behalf of a Semitic original” is to be found), but, as Ball points out, “the writer may have taken pains to soften down the harshness of a baldly literal translation.” Where linguistic indications do not give definite clues, we must be guided by other considerations; the writer being a Jew of the orthodox Palestinian type it is hard to believe that he would have composed a prayer in any language than that in which he had always been accustomed to pray; and set forms of prayer, like the one before us, would have been written in Hebrew, not in Aramaic.