Christ in Prayer of Manasseh

The Prayer of Manasseh is the cry of the worst of sinners cast wholly on the mercy of God, and in that cry it leans toward the very heart of the Gospel. It is set in the mouth of Manasseh, the king who had filled Jerusalem with idolatry and innocent blood (2 Kings 21:16) and then, in his captivity, “humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers” (2 Chron. 33:12-13). The prayer names a God of “great compassion, longsuffering, very merciful” whose mercy toward the pe…