International Standard Bible Encyclopedia

ho'-za-i (chozay, or as it stands at the close of the verse in question, 2 Chronicles 33:19, chozay; Septuagint ton horonton; Vulgate (Jerome's Latin Bible, 390-405 A.D.) "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 2 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 2 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 33:12, 18 and included in this history, suggested the apocryphal book, "The Prayer of Manasses," written, probably, in the 1st century B.C.

See APOCRYPHA.

J. Gray McAllister