The Expositor's Bible: The Book of the Twelve Prophets,...

[8] Stade (Gesch. des Volkes Israel, I., pp. 627 f.) denies to Manasseh the reconstruction of the high places, the Baal altars and the Asheras, for he does not believe that Hezekiah had succeeded in destroying these. He takes 2 Kings xxi. 3, which describes these reconstructions, as a late interpolation rendered necessary to reconcile the tradition that Hezekiah’s reforms had been quite in the spirit of Deuteronomy, with the fact that there were still high places in the land when Josiah began his reforms. Further, Stade takes the rest of 2 Kings xxi. 2b-7 as also an interpolation, but unlike verse 3 an accurate account of Manasseh’s idolatrous institutions, because it is corroborated by the account of Josiah’s reforms, 2 Kings xxiii. Stade also discusses this passage in Z.A.T.W., 1886, pp. 186 ff.

[15] Whether the parenthetical apostrophes to Jehovah as Maker of the heavens, their hosts and all the powers of nature (Amos iv. 13, v. 8, 9, ix. 5, 6), are also to be attributed to Manasseh’s reign is more doubtful. Yet the following facts are to be observed: that these passages are also (though to a less degree than v. 26 f.) parenthetic; that their language seems of a later cast than that of the time of Amos (see Vol. I., pp. 204, 205: though here evidence is adduced to show that the late features are probably post-exilic); and that Jehovah is expressly named as the Maker of certain of the stars. Similarly when Mohammed seeks to condemn the worship of the heavenly bodies, he insists that God is their Maker. Koran, Sur. 41, 37: “To the signs of His Omnipotence belong night and day, sun and moon; but do not pray to sun or moon, for God hath created them.” Sur. 53, 50: “Because He is the Lord of Sirius.” On the other side see Driver’s Joel and Amos (Cambridge Bible for Schools Series), 1897, pp. 118 f., 189.

How deeply Manasseh had planted in Israel the worship of the heavenly host may be seen from the survival of the latter through all the reforms of Josiah and the destruction of Jerusalem (Jer. vii. 18, viii., xliv.; Ezek. viii. Cf. Stade, Gesch. des V. Israel, I., pp. 629 ff.).

[16] The Jehovist and Elohist into the closely mortised JE. Stade indeed assigns to the period of Manasseh Israel’s first acquaintance with the Babylonian cosmogonies and myths which led to that reconstruction of them in the spirit of her own religion which we find in the Jehovistic portions of the beginning of Genesis (Gesch. des V. Isr., I., pp. 630 ff.). But it may well be doubted (1) whether the reign of Manasseh affords time for this assimilation, and (2) whether it was likely that Assyrian and Babylonian theology could make so deep and lasting impression upon the purer faith of Israel at a time when the latter stood in such sharp hostility to all foreign influences and was so bitterly persecuted by the parties in Israel who had succumbed to these influences.

[21] But in his conquests of Hauran, Northern Arabia and the eastern neighbours of Judah, he had evidently sought to imitate the policy of Asarhaddon in 675 f., and secure firm ground in Palestine and Arabia for a subsequent attack upon Egypt. That this never came shows more than anything else could Assyria’s consciousness of growing weakness.

[34] Heb. Kasdim, כַּשְׂדִּים; LXX. Χαλδαῖοι; Assyr. Kaldâa, Kaldu. The Hebrew form with s is regarded by many authorities as the original, from the Assyrian root kashadu, to conquer, and the Assyrian form with l to have arisen by the common change of sh through r into l. The form with s does not occur, however, in Assyrian, which also possesses the root kaladu, with the same meaning as kashadu. See Mr. Pinches’ articles on Chaldea and the Chaldeans in the new edition of Vol. I. of Smith’s Bible Dictionary.