The story of King Manasseh, successor to the righteous Hezekiah, offers a chilling example. According to Legends of the Jews, after Hezekiah's death, Manasseh completely abandoned the God of his fathers, indulging in the most wicked imaginings.
Imagine this: he didn't just neglect the altar; he destroyed it. And in the very heart of the Temple in Jerusalem, the kodesh hakodashim, the Holy of Holies, he erected a monstrous idol. This wasn't just any idol. It had four faces, a grotesque imitation of the figures on God's own throne, as Ginzberg retells based on earlier sources. And it was positioned so that no matter which way you entered the Temple, one of its faces would confront you. It was a deliberate act of defiance.
But Manasseh's sacrilege wasn't confined to the Temple. He was malevolent towards his own people too. He commissioned an enormous image, so heavy it took a thousand men to carry. And here’s the truly horrifying part: each day, after the crew had done their work, Manasseh had them killed. Every. Single. Day.
His mission was to utterly eradicate Judaism and its core beliefs. He didn’t just want to erase God's name from the Holy Scriptures; he actively mocked the Torah in public lectures. Can you imagine the despair and fear that must have gripped the people?
The prophets, including Isaiah, Micah, Joel, and Habakkuk, could no longer bear to witness these abominations. They fled Jerusalem, seeking refuge in the desert, as described in Legends. But their hiding place was revealed to the king by a treacherous Samaritan.
This Samaritan, a descendant of the false prophet Zedekiah, had his own grievances. He had been forced to flee Jerusalem himself after accusations were brought against him before King Hezekiah. He saw his chance for revenge, and accused the prophets before Manasseh.
Manasseh, eager to silence any dissenting voices, put Isaiah on trial. The charge? That his prophecies contradicted the laws of Moses. They pointed to passages where Isaiah claimed to have seen God, a direct contradiction of God's words to Moses: "Thou canst not see My face; for man shall not see Me and live" (Exodus 33:20). They also cited his harsh comparisons of Israel to Sodom and Gomorrah, and his prophecies of Jerusalem's downfall, as we find in Isaiah 1.
Isaiah, realizing the futility of defending himself, chose silence. He preferred that Manasseh act out of ignorance rather than pure wickedness, according to the legend. But when he heard the king's men pursuing him, he invoked the Name of God, and a cedar tree miraculously opened, swallowing him whole.
But Manasseh wasn't deterred. He ordered the tree to be sawn into pieces. And when the saw reached the part of the bark concealing Isaiah's mouth, the prophet perished. The legend states that his mouth was the vulnerable part of his body because, at the time of his prophetic calling, he had used the contemptuous words "a people of unclean lips" (Isaiah 6:5) to describe Israel. According to Seder Hadorot, Isaiah was 120 years old when he died, murdered by his own grandchild.
The story of Manasseh and Isaiah is a stark reminder of the power of leadership, and the devastating consequences that can arise when that power is used to suppress faith and persecute the righteous. It’s a chilling tale, yet it also serves as a potent reminder of the enduring strength of the prophetic voice, even in the face of unimaginable cruelty. What does it say about the enduring legacy of those who speak truth to power, even when it costs them everything?