'And Hilkiah the high priest said unto Shaphan the scribe, I have
found the book of the law in the house of the Lord: and Hilkiah gave
the book to Shaphan, and he read it. 9. And Shaphan the scribe came to
the king, and brought the king word again, and said, Thy servants have
gathered the money that was found in the house, and have delivered it
into the hand of them that do the work, that have the oversight of the
house of the Lord. 10. And Shaphan the scribe shewed the king, saying,
Hilkiah the priest hath delivered me a book: and Shaphan read it
before the king. 11. And it came to pass, when the king had heard the
words of the book of the law, that he rent his clothes. 12. And the
king commanded Hilkiah the priest, and Ahikam the son of Shaphan, and
Achbor the son of Michaiah, and Shaphan the scribe, and Asahiah a
servant of the king's, saying, 13. Go ye, enquire of the Lord for me,
and for the people, and for all Judah, concerning the words of this
book that is found: for great is the wrath of the Lord that is kindled
against us, because our fathers have not hearkened unto the words of
this book, to do according unto all that which is written concerning
us. 14. So Hilkiah the priest, and Ahikam, and Achbor, and Shaphan,
and Asahiah, went unto Huldah the prophetess, the wife of Shallum the
son of Tikvah, the son of Harhas, keeper of the wardrobe; (now she
dwelt in Jerusalem in the college;) and they communed with her. 15.
And she said unto them, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Tell the
man that sent you to me, 16. Thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will bring
evil upon this place, and upon the inhabitants thereof, even all the
words of the book which the king of Judah hath read: 17. Because they
have forsaken Me, and have burnt incense unto other gods, that they
might provoke Me to anger with all the works of their hands; therefore
My wrath shall be kindled against this place, and shall not be
quenched. 18. But to the king of Judah, which sent you to enquire of
the Lord, thus shall ye say to him, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel,
As touching the words which thou hast heard; 19. Because thine heart
was tender, and thou hast humbled thyself before the Lord, when thou
heardest what I speak against this place, and against the inhabitants
thereof, that they should become a desolation and a curse, and hast
rent thy clothes, and wept before Me; I also have heard thee, saith
the Lord. 20. Behold, therefore, I will gather thee unto thy fathers,
and thou shalt be gathered into thy grave in peace; and thine eyes
shall not see all the evil which I will bring upon this place. And
they brought the king word again.'--2 KINGS xxii. 8-20.
We get but a glimpse into a wild time of revolution and
counter-revolution in the brief notice that the 'servants of Amon,'
Josiah's father, conspired and murdered him in his palace, but were
themselves killed by a popular rising, in which the 'people of the
land made Josiah his son king in his stead,' and so no doubt balked
the conspirators' plans. Poor boy! he was only eight years old when he
made his first acquaintance with rebellion and bloodshed. There must
have been some wise heads and strong arms and loyal hearts round him,
but their names have perished. The name of David was still a spell in
Judah, and guarded his childish descendant's royal rights. In the
eighteenth year of his reign, the twenty-sixth of his age, he felt
himself firm enough in the saddle to begin a work of religious
reformation, and the first reward of his zeal was the finding of the
book of the law. Josiah, like the rest of us, gained fuller knowledge
of God's will in the act of trying to do it so far as he knew it.
'Light is sown for the upright.'
I. We have, first, the discovery of the law. The important and
complicated critical questions raised by the narrative cannot be
discussed here, nor do they affect the broad lines of teaching in the
incident. Nothing is more truthful-like than the statement that, in
course of the repairs of the Temple, the book should be
found,--probably in the holiest place, to which the high priest would
have exclusive access. How it came to have been lost is a more
puzzling question; but if we recall that seventy-five years had passed
since Hezekiah, and that these were almost entirely years of apostasy
and of tumult, we shall not wonder that it was so. Unvalued things
easily slip out of sight, and if the preservation of Scripture
depended on the estimation which some of us have of it, it would have
been lost long ago. But the fact of the loss suggests the wonder of
the preservation. It would appear that this copy was the only one
existing,--at all events, the only one known. It alone transmitted the
law to later days, like some slender thread of water that finds its
way through the sand and brings the river down to broad plains beyond.
Think of the millions of copies now, and the one dusty, forgotten roll
tossing unregarded in the dilapidated Temple, and be thankful for the
Providence that has watched over the transmission. Let us take care,
too, that the whole Scripture is not as much lost to us, though we
have half a dozen Bibles each, as the roll was to Josiah and his men.
Hilkiah's announcement to Shaphan has a ring of wonder and of awe in
it. It sounds as if he had not known that such a book was anywhere in
the Temple. And it is noteworthy that not he, but Shaphan, is said to
have read it. Perhaps he could not,--though, if he did not, how did he
know what the book was? At all events, he and Shaphan seem to have
felt the importance of the find, and to have consulted what was to be
done. Observe how the latter goes cautiously to work, and at first
only says that he has received 'a book.' He gives it no name, but
leaves it to tell its own story,--which it was then, and is still,
well able to do. Scripture is its own best credentials and witnesses
whence it comes. Again Shaphan is the reader, as it was natural that a
'scribe' should be, and again the possibility is that Josiah could not
read.
II. One can easily picture the scene while the reader's voice went
steadily through the commandments, threatenings, and promises,--the
deepening eagerness of the king, the gradual shaping out before his
conscience of God's ideal for him and his people, and the gradual
waking of the sense of sin in him, like a dormant serpent beginning to
stir in the first spring sunshine.
The effect of God's law on the sinful heart is vividly pictured in
Josiah's emotion. 'By the law is the knowledge of sin.' To many of us
that law, in spite of our outward knowledge of it, is as completely
absent from our consciousness as it had been from the most ignorant of
Josiah's subjects; and if for once its searchlight were thrown into
the hidden corners of our hearts and lives, it would show up in
dreadful clearness the skulking foes that are stealing to assail us,
and the foul things that have made good their lodgment in our hearts
and lives. It always makes an epoch in a life when it is really
brought to the standard of God's law; and it is well for us if, like
Josiah, we rend our clothes, or rather 'our heart, and not our
garments,' and take home the conviction, 'I have sinned against the
Lord.'
The dread of punishment sprang up in the young king's heart, and
though that emotion is not the highest motive for seeking the Lord, it
is not an unworthy one, and is meant to lead on to nobler ones than
itself. There is too much unwillingness, in many modern conceptions of
Christ's gospel, to recognise the place which the apprehension of
personal evil consequences from sin has in the initial stages of the
process by which we are 'translated from the kingdom of darkness into
that of God's dear Son.'
III. The message to Huldah is remarkable. The persons sent with it
show its importance. The high priest, the royal secretary, and one of
the king's personal attendants, who was, no doubt, in his confidence,
and two other influential men, one of whom, Ahikam, is known as
Jeremiah's staunch friend, would make some stir in 'the second
quarter,' on their way to the modest house of the keeper of the
wardrobe. The weight and number of the deputation did honour to the
prophetess, as well as showed the king's anxiety as to the matter in
hand. Jeremiah and Zephaniah were both living at this time, and we do
not know why Huldah was preferred. Perhaps she was more accessible.
But conjecture is idle. Enough that she was recognised as having, and
declared herself to have, direct authoritative communications from
God.
For what did Josiah need to inquire of the Lord 'concerning the words
of this book'? They were plain enough. Did he hope to have their
sternness somewhat mollified by the words of a prophetess who might be
more amenable to entreaties or personal considerations than the
unalterable page was? Evidently he recognised Huldah as speaking with
divine authority, and he might have known that two depositories of
God's voice could not contradict each other. But possibly his embassy
simply reflected his extreme perturbation and alarm, and like many
another man when God's law startles him into consciousness of sin, he
betook himself to one who was supposed to be in God's counsels, half
hoping for a mitigated sentence, and half uncertain of what he really
wished. He confusedly groped for some support or guide. But, confused
as he was, his message to the prophetess implied repentance, eager
desire to know what to do, and humble docility. If dread of evil
consequences leads us to such a temper, we shall hear, as Josiah did,
answers of peace as authoritative and divine as were the threatenings
that brought us to our senses and our knees.
IV. The answer which Josiah received falls into two parts, the former
of which confirms the threatenings of evil to Jerusalem, while the
latter casts a gleam athwart the thundercloud, and promises Josiah
escape from the national calamities. Observe the difference in the
designation given him in the two parts. When the threatenings are
confirmed, his individuality is, as it were, sunk; for that part of
the message applies to any and every member of the nation, and
therefore he is simply called 'the man that sent you.' Any other man
would have received the same answer. But when his own fate is to be
disclosed, then he is 'the king of Judah, who sent you,' and is
described by the official position which set him apart from his
subjects.
Huldah has but to confirm the dread predictions of evil which the roll
had contained. What else can a faithful messenger of God do than
reiterate its threatenings? Vainly do men seek to induce the living
prophet to soften down God's own warnings. Foolishly do they think
that the messenger or the messenger's Sender has any 'pleasure in the
death of the wicked'; and as foolishly do they take the message to be
unkind, for surely to warn that destruction waits the evildoer is
gracious. The signal-man who waves the red flag to stop the train
rushing to ruin is a friend. Huldah was serving Judah best by plain
reiteration of the 'words of the book.'
But the second half of her message told that in wrath God remembered
mercy. And that is for ever true. His thunderbolts do not strike
indiscriminately, even when they smite a nation. Judah's corruption
had gone too far for recovery, and the carcase called for the
gathering together of the vultures, but Josiah's penitence was not in
vain. 'I have heard thee' is always said to the true penitent, and
even if he is involved in widespread retribution, its strokes become
different to him. Josiah was assured that the evil should not come in
his days. But Huldah's promise seems contradicted by the circumstances
of his death. It was a strange kind of being gathered to his grave in
peace when he fell on the fatal field of Megiddo, and 'his servants
carried him in a chariot dead, ... and buried him in his own
sepulchre' (2 Kings xxiii. 30). But the promise is fulfilled in its
real meaning by the fact that the threatenings which he was inquiring
about did not fall on Judah in his time, and so far as these were
concerned, he _did_ come to his grave in peace.