EE & R, 4_1: Manasseh Against the Prophet Isaiah: Manasseh’s Case for Idolatry
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4. Manasseh Against the Prophet Isaiah – Is Worship Without Knowledge Fidelity or Betrayal?
This section stages the fiercest theological confrontation in Jewish memory: a King who believed the Torah’s transcendent vision could not be fulfilled in practice, and a Prophet who insisted that God could be seen and His will obeyed.
Let us consider the position of the wicked King Manasseh, long maligned in the annals of Jewish history. What if his sin was not a betrayal of the Torah, but the deepest fidelity to it? What if his embrace of idolatry was not flippant rebellion, but tragic obedience to the logic of the Torah itself?
The Talmud1 tells us that Rav Ashi, the great Amora, once opened a lecture by referring to Manasseh merely as a “colleague.” That night, Manasseh appeared to him in a dream and rebuked him for his casual tone, demonstrating halachic knowledge superior to the redactor of the Talmud. To Rav Ashi’s question – why, if he was so wise, he had practiced idolatry – Manasseh replied: “Had you been there, you would have grabbed the hem of your cloak and run after me!” Chastised, Rav Ashi opened the next day’s lecture by referring to “our teacher, Manasseh.”
The implication is stark: The vilified king was no simple fool, but a scholar, a master, a mind deserving of our attention. A teacher of Rav Ashi is, a fortiori, a teacher to us all. Thus we now turn to him: Our teacher, O wicked Manasseh, reveal to us what you found in the Torah that led you, with unwavering logic and fierce passion, to bow before gods of wood and stone.
To understand the king’s stance, we turn to his reckoning with the prophet Isaiah. The Talmud2 recounts that Manasseh executed the prophet Isaiah for heresy. His accusation? That Isaiah contradicted Moshe, the master of all prophets. Moshe had said, “No man shall see Me and live” (Exodus 33:20), yet Isaiah dared to claim, “I saw Hashem sitting upon a high and lofty throne” (Isaiah 6:1). For this perceived blasphemy, Manasseh condemned the prophet to death.
But what are we to make of this? Why would Manasseh, who bowed to idols, insist on defending Moshe’s theology with lethal precision? Why cite the Torah at all, if he had already rejected its most basic tenet?
The answer is stunning. Manasseh believed the Torah. He honored Moshe as the truest prophet, the one who had told the brutal truth about the Divine: that Hashem is unknowable. Moshe’s request to know Hashem – “Let me know Your ways that I may know You” (Exodus 33:13) – was denied.3 Therefore, all claims to know Hashem, such as Isaiah’s, are false. Manasseh saw the prophet as an impostor, undermining the entire architecture of the Torah by pretending to have access to the inaccessible. And from this logic Manasseh derived permission – nay, an imperative – to worship idols. For if Hashem cannot be known, then He cannot be worshiped directly, and only idols remain to receive the gestures of reverence due to the Divine. If the true God cannot be known – and the Torah says He cannot – then religion must take another form. Man must turn to something he can know, can see, can serve.
This theology, heretical though it may be, is rooted impeccably in Torah exegesis. For the Torah teaches two seemingly contradictory truths: that Hashem is unknowable, and that idolatry is forbidden because the other gods are “not known” to Israel. The implication is clear: Hashem is to be worshipped, and idols rejected, on the same basis — that He is, or is supposed to be, familiar and known to His people.
These seven verses, all from Deuteronomy, indicate that Hashem’s exclusive claim to worship rests, precisely, on the measure in which He is knowable:
…the curse, if you… go after other gods which you have not known (Deuteronomy 11:28)
Should there arise in your midst a prophet… saying, “Let us go after other gods that you have not known and worship them” (ibid 13:2-3)
Should your brother...entice you in secret, saying, “Let us go worship other gods,” which neither you nor your fathers have known (ibid 13:7)
…saying, “Let us go and worship other gods,” which you have not known (ibid 13:14)
And Hashem will scatter you among all the nations… and there you will worship other gods, which you and your fathers have not known, wood and stone (ibid 28:64)
They went and worshipped other gods and bowed down to them, gods that they had not known (ibid 29:25)
They sacrificed… to gods they had not known (ibid 32:17)
These verses condemn idolatry not because the other gods are unreal, but because they are unknown, foreign to Israel’s experience. The logic is unambiguous: Hashem is to be worshipped only insofar as He is known. And if He is not knowable — as Moshe himself testified — then His exclusive claim collapses, and worship must turn elsewhere.
Deuteronomy’s insistence that Hashem be worshiped as the God whom Israel knows stands in stark contradiction to the Torah’s deeper claim: that He is, in truth, unknowable. Let us press on resolutely and take the matter to its logical conclusion, following – for now – in the footsteps of the wicked king, our teacher.
If Hashem is unknowable, as Moshe’s testimony affirms, how can the Torah command to worship Him alone? Manasseh’s answer is both radical and reverent, even sublime: The Torah’s vision of worshipping a known Hashem is aspirational, a promise for a future when Hashem’s ways will be fully revealed. For although knowledge of Hashem was denied him, yet Moshe asked for such knowledge, which implies that such knowledge is possible – only delayed, until such time as mankind merits to see God and live.
This inference is made clear in the Tikkunei Zohar:
“No man shall see Me and live” – until that darkness is removed from there.4
Thus, Manasseh reasons, the Torah’s prohibition against idolatry awaits a future day; in the present, the only gods we can seek to know are the lesser, incomplete divinities, the tangible echoes of the Infinite, not the Infinite Himself. To worship Hashem before He is known is to attempt to force the end of history, for the true Torah is eschatology: a vision of the future that we corrupt by pretending it has already come. To refrain from idolatry before we can truly know Hashem is, in Manasseh’s eyes, to engage in a charade, to pretend a closeness that does not exist. To serve Hashem, as he saw it, is to be irreligious, an irreligion of the worst sort – for nothing ensures we never attain true faith like the parade that pretends we already have.
Manasseh waited. He studied. He believed. But he refused to lie. Until the world was ready, he bowed before what he could see, not to defy the Torah, but to keep its promise sacred.
This is the Manassean doctrine: heretical, faithful, tragic, sublime. The wicked king was no ordinary sinner but rather a Torah scholar of formidable depth. The Sages tell us5 that he would expound fifty-five facets of Toras Kohanim, the dense midrash on Leviticus that dissects the laws of sacrifice and sanctity. He knew the grammar of holiness, the architecture of ritual, the blood and fire of God’s house wherein we sacrifice as a confession of our finitude. His heresy was born not of impulse or ignorance but of exegesis; he bowed to idols not because he misunderstood Torah, but because he read it too well – and insisted on preserving its message in all its terrible purity for the end of time.