The lexica file מְנַשֶּׁה under נשׁה I "to forget" (BDB; HALOT; Gesenius), reading the surface form as an intensive-stem participle, "one causing to forget," and treating Genesis 41:51 (כִּי נַשַּׁנִי אֱלֹהִים, a finite verb with God as subject) as paronomasia rather than derivation. Within Noth's onomastic system a form carrying no surviving divine element is a Kurzname, a shortened verbal-sentence name whose subject ("God causes to forget") has been elided; Fowler classifies within the same tradition. The two analyses are compatible, the surface form being the residue of a fuller theophoric sentence name. Minority derivations circulate but are not adopted by the standard lexica: a link to נשׁה II "to lend, be a creditor" (compare נֹשֶׁה and מַשָּׁא/מַשָּׁה), floated as a supposed semantic parallel to Ephraim "fruitfulness"; and an older proposal reported in the Encyclopaedia Biblica connecting the name to Arabic nasa "to injure the leg tendon," echoing the נָשֶׁה of Genesis 32:32. An Egyptian etymology, unlike the case of Moses, has found no purchase, and the name is treated as West Semitic. Comparative support for נשׁה I is good (Arabic nasiya; Akkadian masu), with the neighbouring field of deferring a debt (Arabic nasaa) explaining the persistent confusion of the two roots.
External attestation is unusually strong for a king of Judah. Esarhaddon's prism from Nineveh (RINAP 4; ANET, 3rd ed., 291) lists Me-na-si-i, king of Iaudi, among twenty-two western vassals compelled to haul cedar and pine to Nineveh, and Ashurbanipal's Rassam Cylinder names Mi-in-si-e among the kings supporting the first Egyptian campaign against Taharqa. The Neo-Assyrian s renders Hebrew shin as expected in that dialect, and the plene final vowel points to a seventh-century pronunciation close to the later Tiberian pointing; neither spelling represents the gemination. The Septuagint's Μανασσῆς (oblique Μανασσῆ; Μαννασσῆ as a variant at Revelation 7:6) transcribes the doubled shin with σσ, independently attesting the gemination the Masoretic pointing marks; the Vulgate has Manasses. The Samaria ostraca preserve Abiezer, Helek and Shemida as district names, tying the clan list of Joshua 17:2 to real toponymy in the Manassite heartland.
On the tribe's origins there is a long debate. Judges 5:14 names Machir, and Gilead separately, but never Manasseh, which Noth, Alt, Aharoni, Kallai, Naaman and Finkelstein have variously taken as evidence that Machir was the original unit and that Manasseh as a full tribe is a relatively late eponymous construct; Fleming presses the Transjordanian and Machirite dimension. Zertal's Manasseh Hill Country Survey supplies the settlement backdrop, with more than two hundred Iron Age I sites recorded between 1250 and 1000 BCE. Genesis 48 is read by von Rad, Westermann, Alter, Sarna, Wenham and Hamilton as the climactic reversal of primogeniture in the book, and by historically minded readers as an explanation after the fact of Ephraim's later dominance in the central hill country; Westermann describes the adoption as a belated legitimation of the boys' future as tribal ancestors.
For the king, Cogan and Tadmor read the Deuteronomistic portrait as an inveterate idolater deliberately assimilated to Ahab, and 2 Kings 24:3 to 4 makes his sins the cause of 586; van Keulen surveys how he became the scapegoat and takes 2 Kings 21:7 to mark the end of the dynastic promise, with Sweeney and others weighing the competing redactional models against the double-redaction scheme of the Cross school. The Chronicler's exile, prayer and restoration arc fits Japhet's account of his theology of immediate retribution and repentance; Knoppers stresses that even in Chronicles the reform neither undoes the damage nor prevents the fall, Ben Zvi treats the episode as largely constructed, and Stavrakopoulou argues that the whole biblical portrait distorts what was in fact a successful reign in which child sacrifice was normal Judahite practice. Thiele's synchronisation gives a coregency from 697/696 BCE and a sole reign of 687/686 to 643/642 BCE, though some question the coregency. The Prayer of Manasseh, a fifteen-verse penitential poem preserved among the Odes in some Septuagint manuscripts and in the Vulgate appendix, fills the gap left by 2 Chronicles 33:18 to 19 and is generally judged a Second Temple composition. On Judges 18:30, McCarthy discusses the suspended nun among the scribal and theological adjustments to the Masoretic text; the Vetus Latina and Vulgate read Moses, the Peshitta and Targum favour Manasseh, and the Greek tradition divides, with the Lucianic text expanding the genealogy to son of Manasseh, son of Gershom, son of Moses.