I’ve had such fun finding out about Manasseh and this prayer. Up till now, I haven’t really paid much attention to the Apocrypha. I have to confess that this prayer which we’ve heard tonight was new to me. One book tells me that, “although beautiful, it is not accepted into the canon of scripture by either the Catholic or Protestant churches”. How interesting, then, to find it listed as one of the readings for Mothering Sunday.
The prayer itself is very simple: it is a prayer for forgiveness. Starting with an affirmation of praise, it continues with a heartfelt expression of unworthiness and repentance, and after imploring God to be merciful, achieves a real sense of the hoped-for forgiveness, and ends with a promise to serve God in the future.
Manasseh, the supposed author of the prayer, with the same name as one of Joseph’s sons, was one of the kings of Judah – that’s the southern portion of the kingdom of Israel which was divided into two after Solomon’s death. He was the 14th king after Solomon, becoming king when he was just twelve years old. He ruled from 687 to 642 BC, which is about 300 years after Solomon. What we know about Manasseh’s reign comes from the second book of Kings, and the second book of Chronicles. Both books tell us in no uncertain terms: “He did evil in the eyes of the Lord, following the detestable practices of the nations the Lord had driven out before the Israelites.”
Mm. So what did he get up to? Well, we are told, he rebuilt the high places, erected altars to Baal and made an Asherah pole. He built altars to the stars in the temple and bowed down to them, he practised sorcery and divination, consulted mediums and spiritists, made his own son pass through fire, and put the carved Asherah pole he had made into the temple. These practices were in direct contravention to the instructions Moses received and passed on to his people with the ten commandments. As we read in Deuteronomy, “This is what you are to do to the nations driven out before you: Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their Asherah poles and burn their idols in the fire.”
Now maybe some of you, like me, found all that easy to understand, except the bit about the Asherah poles. What on earth were they, and why did they have such significance? Well, it turns out that these poles were fertility symbols linked with the goddess Asherah. So I’m sure we can imagine what the carvings were like on the pole Manasseh brought into the temple. Fertility and fruitfulness were central to most primitive religions. But what really surprised me was that, in ancient Hebrew culture, this goddess Asherah was worshipped as the consort of Yahweh – Yahweh of course being one of the names by which the true God was known in ancient times.
Now you can see that the idea that God himself needed a partner, with whom he was on equal terms, someone necessary to enable the very fertility and fruitfulness which was so important, and which God himself desired and commanded, this was a very powerful idea indeed. But we also know that the movement away from a belief in multiple gods and goddesses towards monotheism, was one of the most significant achievements of the Hebrew people; and this problem with the Asherah poles gives us a clue as to how difficult it was to make this cultural and religious shift. Moses was one of the leading figures in this revolution, we might call it. Remember how at the beginning of the ten commandments he says, “You shall have no other Gods.” And introducing the statement of the covenant between God and his people, he says, “The Lord our God, the Lord is one.”
It is against that standard that the writer of the books of Kings and Chronicles make their judgement of every one of the kings that follow David and Solomon. Did he or did he not remain true to the revelation that we still proclaim today whenever we say the Gloria, “You alone are the Lord.”? And when we read about King Manasseh in the second book of Kings, we find that he certainly did not remain true to it. He was tempted back to the old fertility rituals. Now his father Hezekiah was good. He wasn’t tempted, but it may be that there was a bit of a rebellious streak in the young lad – twelve years old, remember – he may have thought to himself, “Why should I copy what my father did? If you ask me, his life was boring; when I’m king I’m going to enjoy myself.”
And apparently that’s just what he did do. But not just a little bit. In rebelling against his dad, he led all the people to follow his backsliding. “Manasseh led them astray,” we are told, “so that they did more evil than the nations the Lord had destroyed before the Israelites.” In addition, the book of Kings tells us, he shed so much innocent blood that he filled Jerusalem from end to end. He was clearly one of the very worst of the kings of Judah: the sort of ruler who nowadays would be tried at the Hague for crimes against humanity, and completely discredited.
If we are to believe the book of Kings, that’s all there is to say about him: a bad lot: end of story. It is only in the second book of Chronicles that we get any idea that there was more to him than that. For in Chronicles we hear that Manasseh was punished by the Lord for his disobedience. The army commanders of the king of Assyria arrived, took Manasseh prisoner, put a hook in his nose, bound him with bronze shackles and took him to Babylon. And that was when he prayed: in this situation of disgrace and distress, humbling himself before the God of his fathers. And we are told that “the Lord was moved by his entreaty and listened to his plea, so he brought him back to Jerusalem and to his kingdom.” And in his new certainty that the Lord is God, he restored everything to the way it had been when he took over from his father Hezekiah. In addition he repaired the city walls and paid for defence commanders throughout his kingdom. Of course he removed his Asherah pole, restored the temple altar and sacrificed fellowship- and thank-offerings on it.
(Just as a postscript, it’s worth mentioning that Manasseh obviously had problems with his own son, Amon. Having been brought up to be accustomed to his father’s old ways, he couldn’t go along with his conversion, and when he himself became king he immediately undid all his father’s good works. But he only lasted two years, as he was assassinated in his palace.)
And that is the context of the Prayer of Manasseh. It’s been a bit long in the telling, but I hope you find it as interesting as I do. I like the human strand in the story which we can all share to some extent: the problem of how to bring up our children so that they benefit from our experience and don’t make our mistakes. But at a deeper level, I’m also very struck by the fact that at this period of our history, we were in the storm of a long-term spiritual revolution. Moses had introduced what we might call “new ways of being Church” in the idea of one God, and the evil and backsliding so detested by the Old Testament writers, was the desire to reject this new revelation, and cling to the familiar old traditional ways. New ways and old ways have always been a stumblingblock in our spiritual life, and no doubt still are today. To say nothing about a culture which practically makes a god of sex. How relevant is that today?!
When I was researching this, I came across a Baptist preacher from the 1800s, whom you may have heard of, called Charles Spurgeon. I found on the Internet a whole catalogue of his sermons, all written out in full, and he preached a very persuasive sermon on the Prayer of Manasseh in South London in 1846 to possibly 10,000 listeners! You may ask, why did I not just print out his sermon and read it to you? Well, apparently he could speak for two hours, so maybe you wouldn’t thank me! And it is, naturally, suited to the time and place where he delivered it. However, it is well worth reading, and if anyone is interested, I can give them the website address (http://www.spurgeon.org/sermons/0105.htm).
Spurgeon talked of Manasseh as a sinner, as an unbeliever, and as a convert. As a sinner he was a Prince of Sinners: his sin was in rebellion against the good upbringing of a faithful father; it was bold and blatant; and it was committed by a person whose power and position meant that many would follow his ways. What a hard time the saints and prophets must have had then! As an unbeliever, he was not at all the equivalent of today’s atheists or agnostics. He was obviously a deeply spiritual man, but his committed paganism was in direct opposition to the proper Jewish faith – probably deliberate opposition. But was he simply wrong, or was his apostasy wicked because he knew all along that he was wrong? The impression we get is that he was a knowing and deliberate sinner.
As a convert? Well, now, here we do get seriously into the mysteries of God’s love! Psychologically, his conversion doesn’t seem too remarkable. He had a good father, a good upbringing. He knew he was rejecting that. He knew the commandments and promise of God revealed through Moses. He knew he was rejecting that, too. So he must have known the risks he was taking, and the damage he was causing to the nation of which he was supposed to be king. So when he was dragged off to Babylon with a hook in his nose and bronze shackles round his ankles, what else could he think except that he was being punished by God. How self-pityingly sorry for himself he must have felt in his exile, disgrace and loneliness!
And this worm had the temerity, the audacity, to turn to God and say sorry! Any right-thinking man would have dismissed that idea at the outset. “Of course I’m sorry now, but I can’t go to God and expect him to have mercy on me. He would only say something like, “After what you been doing to hurt me all your damned life? No way! Who do you think I am?” And I would deserve it too.” But, as the Chronicler tells us, “when he prayed to him, the Lord was moved by his entreaty and listened to his plea. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord is God.”
We also read in Chronicles, “The other events of Manasseh’s reign, including his prayer to God … are written in the annals of the kings of Israel.” But that doesn’t mean in the book of Kings. As we know, for some unaccountable reason, the book of Kings doesn’t even mention Manasseh’s conversion and good works, and you would have thought something so important wouldn’t be omitted. So that means there is no extant record of the prayer of Manasseh dating from anywhere near his lifetime. In fact, it is generally believed that the Prayer of Manasseh which we have heard this evening was written six to seven hundred years after the event, by a Hebrew scholar, simply to fill the hole left by the lack of the real thing.
Does that change anything for us? Well, I think it makes it even more worth having. What can’t change, whoever made up these particular words, is the overwhelming fact that this evil man – evil both spiritually and politically – this evil man dared to turn back to God. He acknowledged his own complete unworthiness, he believed in and found God’s forgiveness, and he devoted the rest of his life to serving him. Now that really does take some thinking about, because of course, that has implications for all of us.
The thought that some creative Hebrew sat down with his quill and his parchment and took the trouble to compose this beautiful prayer, is itself a lovely thought. But what it means is that he recognised the significance of Manasseh’s conversion, and sought to express it in words that brought it to life. It means that what Manasseh went through was not unique to him. It was an experience which the writer could enter into, and in which we can all share. It is often printed with three subheadings to show how the Spirit moves the penitent through stages in the process. It starts with an affirmation of praise, goes on to a confession of sins, and ends with a supplication for pardon. This universal quality was recognised by St Augustine who linked it with the sacrament of confession, and by Luther, who considered it could be useful as a model for all our penitential prayers. With that in mind, I have printed out some copies of the prayer, which you are very welcome to, as it’s not the easiest thing to find.
When we come to Evensong, we say together the prayer of confession, and that, too, has a clear sense of shape, much the same shape as the prayer of Manasseh. In the middle, we come to those words, “and there is no health in us”: words that always send a chill through me when I say them. If we felt them as strongly as Manasseh felt when he said, “I am rejected because of my sins, and I have no relief,” it would be very painful indeed. But we can learn from Manasseh that, whatever our offences, and however badly we feel about ourselves, the love of God extends even to us. Like Manasseh we can realise that it is for sinners that God has appointed repentance and forgiveness. St Paul says the same thing when he says, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.”
And if, like Manasseh, we can know that the Lord is God – not just believe it, but know it, then what else can we do but respond as best we can to his unmeasured love. Like Manasseh, we too will be empowered to “live hereafter a godly, righteous and sober life to the glory of God’s holy name.” Amen.