Prayer of Manasses

The Prayer of Manasseh is a short work of 15 verses of the penitential prayer of king Manasseh of Judah. The majority of scholars believe that the Prayer of Manasseh was written, in Greek, in the first or second century BC. Another work by the same title, though written in Hebrew and containing distinctly different content, was found among the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Manasseh is recorded in the Bible as one of the most idolatrous kings of Judah (2 Kings 21:1–18; 2 Chronicles 33:1–9). The Books of Chronicles, but not the Books of Kings, records that Manasseh was taken captive by the Assyrians (2 Chronicles 33:11–13). While a prisoner, Manasseh prayed for mercy, and upon being freed and restored to the throne turned from his idolatrous ways (2 Chronicles 33:15–17). A reference to the prayer, but not the prayer itself, is made in 2 Chronicles 33:19, which says that the prayer is written in the "history of the seers."

The prayer is considered apocryphal by Jews, Catholics and Protestants. It was placed at the end of 2 Chronicles in the late 4th-century Vulgate. Over a millennium later, Martin Luther included the book in his 74-book translation of the Bible. It was part of the 1537 Matthew Bible, and the 1599 Geneva Bible. It also appears in the Apocrypha of the King James Bible. Pope Clement VIII included the prayer in an appendix to the Vulgate stating that it should continue to be read "lest it perish entirely." In the Roman Rite Liturgy of the Hours; in the corpus of responsories sung with the readings from the books of Kings between Trinity Sunday and August, the seventh cites the Prayer of Manasseh, together with verses of Psalm 50, the penitential Psalm par excellence.R. Peccavi super numerum arenae maris, et multiplicata sunt peccata mea, et non sum dignus videre altitudinem caeli prae multitudine iniquitatis meae: quoniam irritavi iram tuam, * Et malum coram te feci. V. Quoniam iniquitatem meam ego cognosco: et delictum meum contra me est semper, quia tibi soli peccavi. Et malum coram te feci.R. My sins are more in number of the sands of the sea, and my sins are multiplied, and I am not worthy to look up the height of heaven, because of the multitude of my iniquity; for I have provoked thee to anger, * and done evil before Thee. V. For I know my iniquity, and my sin is always before me, for the Thee only have I sinned, and done evil before Thee.

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