Judges 18:30: "Manasseh" or "Moses"?

Notes © 1996 by T.L. Hubeart

Judges 18:30 (KJV) And the children of Dan set up the graven image: and Jonathan, the son of Gershom, the son of Manasseh, he and his sons were priests to the tribe of Dan until the day of the captivity of the land.

Compare the KJV reading with the following:

Judg 18:30 (ASV) And the children of Dan set up for themselves the graven image: and Jonathan, the son of Gershom, the son of Moses, he and his sons were priests to the tribe of the Danites until the day of the captivity of the land. [ASV note at "Moses": "Another reading is, Manasseh."]

Judg 18:30 (NIV) There the Danites set up for themselves the idols, and Jonathan son of Gershom, the son of Moses, and his sons were priests for the tribe of Dan until the time of the captivity of the land. [NIV note at "Moses": "An ancient Hebrew scribal tradition, some Septuagint manuscripts and Vulgate; Masoretic Text Manasseh."]

So is the line of idol priests descended from Manasseh or Moses? Well, the word in the Hebrew text is clearly "Manasseh," but one of the letters is suspended, as can be seen in the footnote of the JPS Tanakh or the text of Jay Green's Interlinear Bible. This suspended letter led to a theory that the word should be "Moses"--a theory regarding which Matthew Henry cites Bishop Patrick's comment that it is "an idle conceit of the rabbin [i.e, Jewish scholars]," but which Dake advocates strenuously. Dake explains this theory at some length, claiming that an alteration of "Moses" to "Manasseh" was made in the text here--

"Ancient Jews suspended the Heb. letter nun over the word Mosheh, which was then changed to Manasseh"

--and that this was "a substitution for Moses to spare the reputation of the great lawgiver and preserve the honor of his name and memory among Israelites." He also insists that Manasseh (by whom he apparently means the son of Joseph) "had no son called Gershom."

However, Moses' grandson is clearly named "Shebuel," not "Jonathan," at 1 Chr. 23:15-16 and at 1 Chr. 26:24 . To get around this, Dake claims that "Shebuel, meaning he returned to God [actually, "captive of God"--see Strong's Concordance, Heb. #7619], is supposed to be the name of Jonathan after his repentance. . . ."

But this argument, which was apparently the reason that the NIV and old ASV read "Moses" here (the New American Standard, to its credit, switches back to "Manasseh"), falls apart in several respects:

There is no specific reason why the "Manasseh" mentioned here must needs be Manasseh son of Joseph; there are several different "Manasseh"s, "Jonathan"s, and "Gershom"s mentioned in scripture itself, and no doubt there were many more unrecorded in Bible times. So the argument that "Manasseh" cannot be correct because one Manasseh "had no son called Gershom" breaks down.
On the other hand, the documentation for "Shebuel" being the grandson of Moses the lawgiver is very strong, and can only be evaded by more theorizing for which, let it be said, there is not a shred of Biblical warrant.
To argue that there was an effort to "spare the reputation" of Moses strikes not only at the preservation of scripture (the alleged addition of a letter to "Moses" to make it "Manasseh," which would be tampering with the sacred writings), but at the very nature of scripture itself, which fearlessly records the vices as well as the virtues of Moses, David, Solomon, Peter, and the others of whom it speaks.

One has to ask the gentlemen who advocate this theory, "Where was God during this process? Was He guiding the hand of the author of Judges and making him write 'Moses,' but was then overridden when scribes turned the word into 'Manasseh'? Or was He the one who inspired the change to 'Manasseh,' meaning that the author of Judges was wrong and out of God's will to write 'Moses'? Or perhaps, like a human author, God had 'second thoughts' about what He had written?" None of these ideas seems consistent with a God Who divinely inspired every word of Scripture.

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