The Divided Monarchy – 11 / Manasseh

The Reign of Manasseh and the Assyrian Conquest of Egypt

 Hezekiah died in 697 BCE and was succeeded by his son Manasseh (697–642 BCE). Judah was now a very small state, totally under the control of Assyria. Manasseh was a loyal vassal throughout most of his long reign. He is named several times in Assyrian records as one of the western kings required to transport materials to Nineveh or elsewhere for imperial building projects or to supply troops for the Assyrian assault on Egypt. By complying with the demands of the Assyrian administration he managed to reign in peace, at least most of the time, for 55 years (2 Kings 21:1 = 2 Chronicles 33:1), and, to that extent, Judah can be said to have been a beneficiary of the Pax Assyriaca in Syria-Palestine. Nevertheless, Manasseh is judged extremely negatively in the Bible, especially in the account of his reign in 2 Kings 21:1–18, where he is condemned not for his loyalty to Assyria, but for his religious policies. The principal author of the account in Kings was an exilic historian of the Deuteronomistic school, thus an advocate of the religious reforms of Hezekiah, Manasseh’s father, and Josiah, Manasseh’s grandson. The writer was trying to explain why Jerusalem fell despite these reforms, and he fixed on Manasseh because Manasseh was a counterreformer. In 2 Kings 21:10–15, the historian recites an oracle of Yahweh, attributed to unnamed prophets, that lays explicit blame on Manasseh for the fall of Jerusalem and the exile of its people.

It was once assumed that Manasseh’s religious policies were the inevitable result of his Assyrian allegiance, but this was not the case. As already noted in connection with Hezekiah’s reforms, Assyria imposed no cultic restrictions on vassal states, permitting them to continue their indigenous religious customs.144 The list of cultic practices for which Manasseh is condemned in 2 King 21:3–7 includes no reference to the worship of Assyrian gods. The cultic changes made by Manasseh were, instead, revivals of old Israelite and Judahite practices that had been accepted in the time of his grandfather, Ahaz, and earlier, but set aside by the reforms of his father, Hezekiah. In particular, “he rebuilt the high places,” that is, the local places of sacrifice, “that his father Hezekiah had destroyed” (2 Kings 21:3), thus reversing the movement towards cultic centralization that lay at the core of Hezekiah’s reform program. Manasseh’s reversion to this and other abandoned practices was harshly condemned by reformers and biblical writers living in the time of Josiah and later. But from another point of view, Manasseh’s actions may be understood as a kind of reform in themselves—that is, as a counterreformation, involving a wholesale rejection of the innovative religious policies of Hezekiah, which, as Manasseh probably saw it, had not succeeded in protecting Judah from Assyria.

Manasseh was a vassal of three Assyrian kings. Sennacherib’s last years were spent dealing with unrest in Babylon, which he finally destroyed in 689 BCE Sennacherib was assassinated in 681 BCE by his sons (cf. 2 Kings 19:37), leading to a power struggle that resulted in the accession of his youngest son Esarhaddon (681–669 BCE), who had been Sennacherib’s designated heir and not one of his assassins. Much of Esarhaddon’s reign was spent in an effort to conquer Egypt, an enterprise that was completed by his own son Assurbanipal (668–627 BCE). Throughout most of this period Egypt was ruled by Taharqa (690–664 BCE), the biblical Tirhakah, whose reign was remarkable for both its achievements and its disasters. It was the highpoint of the Cushite Period (the XXVth Dynasty), marked by prosperity and building, especially in the dynasty’s homeland of Nubia but also at Thebes; but, as we shall see, the XXVth Dynasty also suffered the first successful invasion of Egypt in a thousand years—that is, since the Hyksos Period.

At the time of Esarhaddon’s accession (681 BCE) the Assyrian Empire extended to the border of Egypt; thus, Esarhaddon inherited full control of the coastal trunk road, the King’s Highway east of the Jordan, and all the northern outlets available to the South Arabian trade. With the consolidation of Egypt under Pharaoh Tirhakah, however, Assyria had a serious rival for control of commerce, by land and sea, in the eastern Mediterranean. A clash was inevitable. The pattern developed that Assyria became increasingly aggressive towards Egypt while Tirhakah acted covertly or openly to support anti-Assyrian uprisings in the western provinces of the empire.

Before he could turn his attention to the conquest of Egypt, however, Esarhaddon was obliged to spend a few years defending his northern borders against the Medes and the incursions of Eurasian horse nomads, including both Cimmerians and Scythians. He then had to deal with a series of revolts in the West, which can be seen as the opening rounds in his fight with Egypt. Tyre and Sidon, which had been united in the days when Luli had rebelled against Sennacherib, were now rivals. King Baal of Tyre was, like Manasseh, one of Assyria’s most submissive vassals, and as a reward Esarhaddon made a treaty with him giving him certain trade privileges such as free entry into all Mediterranean ports. Abdimilkutti of Sidon, provoked by what must have seemed to him unfair advantages for his rival, eventually decided to rebel, most probably with the encouragement and assurances of Pharaoh Tirhakah. In response Esarhaddon marched west in 678 BCE and besieged Sidon; within a year he had captured and beheaded Abdimilkutti and cast the city into the sea, reassigning portions of Sidonian territory to Tyre. Manasseh of Judah was one of several vassal kings required to help in the rebuilding of the ruined city as Kar-Ashur-ah-iddina, “Esarhaddon’s Landing.”

According to the so-called Babylonian Chronicle, the first major battle between the Assyrian and Egyptian armies in Esarhaddon’s reign occurred in his seventh year (674 BCE), when “the army of Assyria was defeated in a bloody battle in Egypt.” Nothing more is known of this conflict, but it seems to have been a serious setback for Assyria, since Esarhaddon did not return west until his tenth year (671 BCE). At that time, having accused his old ally Baal of Tyre of conspiring with Tirhakah, Esarhaddon marched past Phoenicia, leaving troops to enforce an embargo on food and water against Tyre, and proceeded south past the now-Egyptian fortress of Ashkelon to the Wadi of Egypt. From there the invasion of Egypt was launched in earnest. The Assyrian army crossed the Sinai, using camels and waterskins provided by “all the kings of Arabia.” After arriving in the Nile Delta, Esarhaddon reached Memphis after fighting three battles in 15 days. The city capitulated, and the queen and crown prince were captured, but Tirhakah himself fled south into Upper Egypt, where he still had control, and began to reorganize his forces.

Esarhaddon, probably representing himself as the liberator of Egypt from Cushite rule, accepted the surrender of local rulers of Lower Egypt and departed, leaving the Nile Delta in their hands. As soon as the Assyrian army had withdrawn, however, Tirhakah returned north and seized power again. This provoked Esarhaddon to launch another campaign against Egypt in 669 BCE, but the Assyrian emperor died at Haran, shortly after setting out, and it remained for his son Assurbanipal (669–627 BCE) to finish the war with Tirhakah. In 667 BCE Assurbanipal sent an army to Egypt led by his viceroy (turtanu). This expeditionary force was supported by ground troops that the Assyrian vassal kings, including Manasseh of Judah, supplied, and it was reinforced by naval fleets launched from coastal vassal states. Again Tirhakah was defeated at Memphis, and again he fled south. This time, however, the Assyrian army pursued his troops up the Nile, establishing control as far south as Aswan. Tirhakah himself escaped to Nubia.

As the Assyrian army withdrew, it again entrusted Egypt to local rulers who had pledged loyalty, and again the local rulers betrayed the Assyrians and conspired with Tirhakah, who in 666 BCE again returned to power. In reprisal, Assurbanipal sent soldiers to seize the disloyal rulers, executing many but bringing two, Necho of Sais and his son Psammetichus, to Nineveh. In 665 BCE he established the former as Necho I (665–664 BCE), the first king of the XXVIth (Saite) Dynasty. In 664 BCE Tirhakah died, having first named his son Tantamani or Tanwetamani (664–656 BCE) as his successor. When Tantamani attacked the Assyrian troops at Memphis and seized the city, Assurbanipal again sent the Assyrian army into Egypt, where it took back control of Memphis and marched on Thebes. Thebes was captured and sacked in 664/663 BCE (cf. Nahum 3:8–11). Though Tantamani remained at least nominally in power as the Egyptian ruler controlling Upper Egypt from Nubia until his death in 656 BCE, Lower Egypt was now governed by Necho’s son, Psammetichus I (664–610 BCE), from Sais.

The Assyrian Empire was now badly overextended, and Egypt soon became independent again. After the rebellion of 666–665 BCE, Assyria recognized Necho and then Psammetichus as sole king of Egypt on condition that neither would foment rebellion against Assyria. In 656 BCE with the death of Tantamani and the end of the XXVth Dynasty, Psammetichus was able to extend the rule of the XXVIth. Dynasty south to Thebes. Meanwhile the Cimmerians, now well established in Asia Minor, continued to threaten Assyria’s Syrian holdings. These factors destabilized the empire, but the first really critical blow came from Babylon, where a major revolt erupted in 652 BCE at the instigation of Assurbanipal’s own brother Shamash-shum-ukin, whom their father, Esarhaddon, had appointed as vice-regent in Babylon. This revolt soon spread. In the East it was supported by Chaldean nationalists as well as Arameans and Elamites, the same groups who had backed Merodachbaladan earlier. In the West the primary supporters of the revolt seem to have been Arabs, who probably perceived the vulnerability of Assyria as an opportunity to liberate the trade routes of the southern Levant. Though the Assyrian forces were able to contain the various Arab incursions associated with Shamash-shum-ukin’s revolt, the victory was only temporary, since at this time much of Transjordan began to be overrun by Kedarites and other Arabian tribes who did not recognize Assyrian sovereignty. By 648 BCE Assurbanipal had quelled the revolt in Babylon, but it was a foreboding of the fate of the empire.

We have no direct evidence of the way the news of the revolt in Babylon, and of Assyria’s other troubles in the mid-seventh century BCE, was received in Judah. Apart from its polemic against Manasseh’s religious policies, the Kings account of Manasseh’s reign (2 Kings 21:1–18), with its Deuteronomistic orientation, provides little information about Manasseh’s activities. On the other hand, the Chronicler’s account (2 Chronicles 33:1–20), though it draws heavily on that of Kings, supplies additional details suggesting that in the last decade of his reign, with Assyria substantially weakened, Manasseh may have begun to move Judah towards independence.

In particular, the Chronicler (2 Chronicles 31:14) credits Manasseh with building “an outer wall for the City of David, west of the Gihon, in the wadi” and assigning military officers to “all the fortified cities of Judah.” The Chronicler does not indicate when in Manasseh’s reign these things were done, but it seems probable that they began at the time of the revolt in Babylon (652–648 BCE). The activities described are reminiscent on a smaller scale of Hezekiah’s preparations for his revolt against Sennacherib, and they sound very much as if they were designed to strengthen Judah in preparation for a declaration of independence against Assyria. Manasseh’s “outer wall” may have been identified archaeologically, and, more generally, excavations have found substantial evidence of refortification throughout Judah in the latter part of the seventh century. Most of this building should probably be associated with Josiah, but it may have begun during the last days of Manasseh.