The Prayer of Manasseh: The Worst King Asks for Mercy

At a Glance

Who wrote it: An unknown Jewish writer, in the voice of King Manasseh of Judah.

When: Uncertain. Probably between the 200s BC and the first century AD. The oldest surviving copy is in a Christian book of church rules from the 200s.

Where it fits: Manasseh reigned for fifty-five years, from about 697 to 642 BC (2 Kings 21; 2 Chronicles 33). The prayer is set while he is a prisoner in chains in Babylon.

Which Bibles keep it: The Orthodox churches, among the Odes, and they chant it at Great Compline, a late-evening service. Catholic Bibles printed it in an appendix after the Council of Trent. The 1611 King James printed it among the Apocrypha.

Where you hear it in your Bible: 2 Chronicles 33:12–13 and 18–19 says Manasseh prayed in his chains and that his prayer was written down. This is a prayer written to fill that gap.

How close it stays to me: Close in mercy for the worst of sinners. Silent about the people he killed.

If you only read three chapters: It is fifteen verses. Read them all, then 2 Chronicles 33.

Words to Know

Manasseh — king of Judah, the son of good King Hezekiah, remembered as the worst king Judah ever had.

Repentance — turning around: admitting what you have done wrong and changing direction.

The Odes — a collection of songs from the Bible sung in Orthodox morning prayer, many of them prayers taken from inside other books.

High places — hilltop shrines for worship outside the Temple, often to other gods.

The Book in Brief

The prayer begins by praising God as the maker of heaven and earth, who bound the sea and sealed the deep, and before whom all things tremble. His anger against sinners is unbearable, but his mercy is beyond measure, and he has promised repentance and forgiveness to those who sin.

Repentance, the king says, is not for the righteous, like Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who did not sin. It is for sinners like him. His sins are more than the sand of the sea. He is bent double by iron chains and cannot lift his head. He has set up abominations and done what God hates.

So he bends the knee of his heart, confesses his sins, and begs God to forgive him and not to destroy him with his sins. God is the God of those who repent, and will show his goodness by saving one so unworthy. The king promises to praise God all the days of his life.

The first telling is in 2 Kings. Manasseh became king at twelve and reigned fifty-five years. He rebuilt the shrines his father had torn down, set up altars to other gods in the Temple itself, and burned his own son as an offering. Moreover Manasseh shed innocent blood very much, until he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another (2 Kings 21:16).

In 2 Kings, there is no turning back. He dies a wicked king. And a few chapters later, when Babylon’s armies begin to overrun Judah, the book says it happened for the sins of Manasseh … and also for the innocent blood that he shed; for he filled Jerusalem with innocent blood, and the LORD would not pardon (2 Kings 24:3–4).

The LORD would not pardon. That is the end of the first story.

The second telling

The second telling is in 2 Chronicles, written later. It tells the same terrible reign. But then it adds something.

The king of Assyria’s captains took Manasseh in chains, bound him with fetters, and carried him to Babylon. When he was in distress, he begged the LORD his God, and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers. He prayed to him; and he was entreated by him, and heard his supplication, and brought him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom (2 Chronicles 33:11–13).

And it says the prayer was written down: his prayer to his God … behold, they are written among the acts of the kings of Israel (2 Chronicles 33:18).

That record is lost. But someone, long afterward, wrote the prayer this king might have prayed. That is the Prayer of Manasseh.

So your own Bible holds two answers to the question: can the worst man in Judah’s history be forgiven? One says no. The other says yes. This little prayer stands on the side of yes.

The knee of my heart

The prayer is short, and every line of it is worth your time.

It begins by admitting how terrible God is to sinners. Then it turns. You, O Lord, according to your great goodness have promised repentance and forgiveness to those who have sinned against you (Prayer of Manasseh 8).

And then the line at its heart: God have not appointed repentance to the just, to Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, which have not sinned against you; but you have appointed repentance to me that am a sinner (Prayer of Manasseh 8).

Repentance is not for good people. It is for people like me.

Those who are healthy have no need for a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance (Mark 2:17). That is what I said, eating in a tax collector’s house, when the religious men complained. Manasseh’s prayer had said it before me.

Then the king bows. I am bowed down with many iron bands, that I can’t lift up my head by reason of my sins … Now therefore I bow the knee of my heart, beseeching you of grace. I have sinned, O Lord, I have sinned (Prayer of Manasseh 10–12).

The knee of his heart. He is in chains, and cannot kneel properly, so he kneels on the inside.

I told a story about a tax collector who stood at the back of the Temple, wouldn’t even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ and I said he went home right with God (Luke 18:13–14). Manasseh, who could not lift his head, prayed that prayer.

Go deeperWhere the prayer was found

No Hebrew copy of this prayer survives. The oldest copy we have is in Syriac, in a Christian book called the Didascalia Apostolorum, the Teaching of the Apostles, a set of rules for church life written in the 200s. Its writer quotes the whole prayer while telling bishops to receive sinners who repent, and uses Manasseh as the example: if God forgave even him, the church must not turn away anyone who comes back.¹

The prayer appears in Greek in the Apostolic Constitutions, a fourth-century reworking of the same church rules, and then in a fifth-century Bible, the Codex Alexandrinus, among the Odes, a collection of fourteen biblical songs placed after the Psalms. That is where the Orthodox churches still keep it.

Among the Dead Sea Scrolls is a different prayer with Manasseh’s name on it. A fragment numbered 4Q381 has a heading that reads, in part, Prayer of Manasseh, king of Judah, when the king of Assyria imprisoned him. Its words are not the same as the prayer in this volume.² So at least two writers, in different times, tried to give Manasseh his prayer. The gap in 2 Chronicles invited it.

The Council of Trent, in 1546, left this prayer out of the Catholic list of scripture, and the official Catholic Bible of 1592 printed it in an appendix with 1 and 2 Esdras.

The prodigal king

The prayer ends not with a demand but with a hope. Forgive me, O Lord, forgive me, and destroy me not with my iniquities … For you, O Lord, are the God of those who repent; and in me you will show all your goodness: for you will save me, that am unworthy, according to your great mercy (Prayer of Manasseh 13–14).

In me you will show all your goodness. If God can forgive this man, he can forgive anyone. That is the whole argument.

I told it as a story about a son who wasted everything and came home rehearsing a speech: Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight. I am no longer worthy to be called your son (Luke 15:21). The father did not let him finish. He called for the best robe.

Go deeperIs there anyone God will not forgive?

The two tellings of Manasseh in your Bible are an old argument, and it has never gone away.

The rabbis of the centuries after me argued about Manasseh directly. A teaching in the Mishnah, the great collection of Jewish law from around AD 200, lists three kings who have no share in the world to come, and Manasseh is one of them. But the very next line records a rabbi who disagreed, citing 2 Chronicles: God heard his prayer and brought him back. Later rabbis told a story that the angels tried to shut the gates of heaven against Manasseh’s prayer, and God dug a tunnel under his throne so that the prayer could reach him anyway.³

Christians had the same argument in another form. In the early church, there were bishops who said that some sins, such as murder, denying the faith under persecution, and adultery, could not be forgiven by the church after baptism, or only once. The Didascalia, which preserved this prayer, quoted it to argue the other way: no sinner who truly turns is to be shut out.¹

The answer of this prayer, and of the father running down the road, is that there is no one God will not take back. The harder question, the one the prayer does not ask, is what the forgiven man owes to the people he hurt.

Where Manasseh and I part

There is something missing from this prayer, and you should see it.

Manasseh filled Jerusalem from one end to another with innocent blood (2 Kings 21:16). In fifteen verses of confession, those people are never mentioned. The prayer is about the king and God. His sins are above the number of the sands of the sea, but they have no names and no faces.

When Zacchaeus, a tax collector who had gotten rich working for Rome, decided to turn around, he did not only pray. Behold, Lord, half of my goods I give to the poor. If I have wrongfully exacted anything of anyone, I restore four times as much. And I said, Today, salvation has come to this house (Luke 19:8–9).

God forgives the worst of sinners. That is true, and this prayer says it beautifully. But turning around is not only something you do on your knees. It is something you do for the people you hurt.

Check It Yourself

Look up: 2 Kings 21:16 and 24:3–4, then 2 Chronicles 33:11–13.

You will find: the same king, the LORD would not pardon in one book, and he was entreated by him in the other.

Then read the Prayer of Manasseh, all fifteen verses, and Luke 19:8–9.

The Short Version

• 2 Kings says Manasseh was never forgiven. 2 Chronicles says he prayed in chains in Babylon and was restored, and that his prayer was written down.
• The Prayer of Manasseh is a prayer someone later wrote to fill that gap.
• Its heart: repentance is not for the righteous but for me, a sinner. I said I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.
• The king, in chains, bows the knee of his heart.
• It never mentions the innocent people he killed. Zacchaeus showed what turning around also means: paying back the people you hurt.