A Penitent King's Prayer

The Prayer of Manasseh is a short penitential psalm, only fifteen verses long, placed in the mouth of Manasseh, king of Judah, one of the most notoriously wicked kings in the biblical history. According to 2 Chronicles, Manasseh filled Jerusalem with idolatry and bloodshed, was carried in chains to Babylon by the Assyrians, and there humbled himself and repented, whereupon God restored him to his kingdom; the same passage notes that his prayer was recorded in certain court chronicles.

The Prayer of Manasseh is a later composition that supplies the text of that lost prayer. It is a model of contrition: the penitent extols the mercy and patience of God, confesses that his sins outnumber the sands of the sea, declares himself unworthy to lift his eyes to heaven, and casts himself entirely on the divine compassion, "for you are the God of those who repent." Composed probably in the last two centuries BCE, in Greek (though perhaps from a Hebrew or Aramaic original), it is one of the most moving expressions of repentance in the whole body of biblical and para-biblical literature.