the word of Yahweh spoken though His servants, the prophets. Moreover, it was
by Yahweh’s command that this happened in Judah, to remove them from his
presence because of the sins of Manasseh, because of all that he had done. And
as well, the innocent blood that he shed, filling Jerusalem with innocent blood,
and Yahweh was unwilling to forgive...This passage illustrates the two dimensions of the biblical record in Second Kings
which will be encountered repeatedly: the political, and the theological, with the
former flowing into the latter. Viewed politically, Nebuchadnezzar’s attacks against
Judah were triggered by Jehoiakim’s rebellion, which could mean anything from
armed resistance, to refusal to pay tribute, to giving aid and comfort to the Egyptians.
The references to rebellion (the Hebrew verb ma ̄ rad), here and subsequently in 2
Kings 24 : 20 relevant to Zedekiah’s later rebellion, relate to the prophetic doctrine
outlined above, according to which submission to Babylonia, as to Assyria at an earlier
time, was Yahweh’s will. In this spirit, we read explicit statements to the effect that
it was Yahweh who launched the attacks against Judah, not Nebuchadnezzar and his
forces, and that this catastrophe was in fulfillment of the warnings transmitted by
Yahweh’s servants, the prophets. This prophetic theme is developed to its fullest in
Jeremiah, as we shall observe presently. It is tragic to learn that it was already
Yahweh’s intent during the reign of Jehoiakim to terminate Judah by exiling the
people, which is what is meant by saying that Yahweh would “remove (them) from
his presence” ( 2 Kings 24 : 3 ; and see Levine 2005 a).
As regards the theological, or “cultic-moral” dimension of the prophetic ideology,
expressed in the above citation, it would be well to comment on the literary function
of the cliché “the sins of Manasseh,” which occurs in the cited passage. Similar
formulaic statements had been interpolated earlier on so as to “foresee,” as it were,
the loss of the northern kingdom of Israel to the Assyrians ( 2 Kings 17 : 7 – 23 , cf. 1
Kings 11 : 29 – 39 ). The link between the two phases, the Assyrian and the Babylonian,
is provided, precisely, by Isaiah’s prediction to Hezekiah in 2 Kings 20 : 17 – 19 , discussed
above. Such retrospective footnotes served to create an atmosphere of foreboding and
anticipation. In 2 Kings 21 : 10 – 18 , Manasseh, king of Judah and Hezekiah’s successor,
is effectively blamed for Yahweh’s eventual abandonment of his own people, who will
be handed over into the power of their enemies ( 2 Kings 21 : 14 a).
At this point, the enemies are not yet specified as Babylonians, or Chaldeans, but
there is no doubt about who is meant. The same motif of abandonment by Yahweh
accounts for the brief interpolation in 2 Kings 23 : 26 – 27 to the effect that despite
Josiah’s repentance, his “turning back” (the Hebrew verb sˇûb) from the sins of Manasseh,
Yawheh did not “turn back” from his anger at Judah. That statement rationalizes
Judah’s eventual downfall as punishment for the earlier sins of Manasseh, not those
of Josiah, himself. It is as if to say: even Josiah’s cultic reforms, religiously correct
as they were, could not assuage Yahweh’s wrath.
Of both Manasseh ( 2 Kings 21 : 16 ) and Jehoiakim ( 2 Kings 24 : 4 ) it is said that
they had shed “innocent blood,” a moral and social indictment. Immediately preceding
the attribution of Judah’s downfall to Manasseh, 2 Kings 21 : 1 – 10 enumerate the
many cultic, or religious sins of that king. Manasseh’s sins comprise a catalogue of
almost every kind of paganism, idolatry, and religious disloyalty known in biblical
literature! Once these had been enumerated, it became possible to refer generically
— Baruch A. Levine —