sayings of the prophet Hozai, but has not come down to our day. The “prayer of Manasseh” given by the lxx is an apocryphal production, composed in Greek; cf. my Introduction to the Old Testament, § 247.
Verse 14
After his return, Manasseh took measures to secure his kingdom, and especially the capital, against hostile attacks. “He built an outer wall of the city of David westward towards Gihon in the valley, and in the direction of the fish-gate; and he surrounded the Ophel, and made it very high.” The words היצונה חומה (without the article) point to the building of a new wall. But since it has been already recorded of Hezekiah, in 2Ch 32:5, that he built “the other wall without,” all modern expositors, even Arnold in Herz.'s Realenc. xviii. S. 634, assume the identity of the two walls, and understand ויּבן of the completion and heightening of that “other wall” of which it is said מאד ויּגבּיהה, and which shut in Zion from the lower city to the north. In that case, of course, we must make the correction החומה. The words “westward towards Gihon in the valley, and לבוא ב, in the direction to (towards) the fish-gate,” are then to be taken as describing the course of this wall from its centre, first towards the west, and then towards the east. For the valley of Gihon lay, in all probability, outside of the western city gate, which occupied the place of the present Jaffa gate. But the fish-gate was, according to Neh 3:3, at the east end of this wall, at no great distance from the tower on the north-east corner. The valley (הנּהל) is a hollow between the upper city (Zion) and the lower (Acra), probably the beginning of the valley, which at its south-eastern opening, between Zion and Moriah, is called Tyropoion in Josephus. The words, “he surrounded the Ophel,” sc. with a wall, are not to be connected with the preceding clauses, as Berth. connects them, translating, “he carried the wall from the north-east corner farther to the south, and then round the Ophel;” for “between the north-east corner and the Ophel wall lay the whole east wall of the city, as far as to the south-east corner of the temple area, which yet cannot be regarded as a continuation of the wall to the Ophel wall” (Arnold, loc. cit.). Jotham had already built a great deal at the Ophel wall (2Ch 27:3). Manasseh must therefore only have strengthened it, and increased its height. On the words שׂ ויּשׂם cf. 2Ch 32:6 and 2Ch 17:2.
Verses 15-17
And he also removed the idols and the statues from the house of the Lord, i.e., out of the two courts of the temple (2Ch 33:5), and caused the idolatrous altars which he had built upon the
