The meaning of Hozai in the Bible
(From International Standard Bible Encyclopedia)
ho'-za-i (chozay, or as it stands at the close of the verse in question, II Chronicles 33:19, chozay; Septuagint ton horonton; Vulgate (Jerome's Latin Bible, 390-405 AD) "Hozai"; the King James Version the seers; the King James Version margin "Hosai"; the American Standard Revised Version "Hozia," the American Revised Version margin "the seers." Septuagint not improbably reads ha-chozim, as in II Chronicles 33:18; an easy error, since there we find we-dhibhere ha-chozim, "the words of the seers," and here dibhere chozay, "the words of Hozai." Kittel, following Budde, conjectures as the original reading chozayw, "his (Manasseh's) seers"): A historiographer of Manasseh, king of Judah. Thought by many of the Jews, incorrectly, to be the prophet Isaiah, who, as we learn from II Chronicles 26:22, was historiographer of a preceding king, Uzziah. This "History of Hozai" has not come down to us. The prayer of Manasseh, mentioned in II Chronicles 33:12 f., II Chronicles 33:18 f. and included in this history, suggested the apocryphal book, "The Prayer of Manasses," written, probably, in the 1st century BC.
See APOCRYPHA.
J. Gray McAllister
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