'And when they brought out the money that was brought into the house
of the Lord, Hilkiah the priest found a book of the law of the Lord
given by Moses. 15. And Hilkiah answered and said to Shaphan the
scribe, I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord. And
Hilkiah delivered the book to Shaphan. 16 And Shaphan carried the book
to the king, and brought the king word back again, saying, All that
was committed to thy servants, they do it. 17. And they have gathered
together the money that was found in the house of the Lord, and have
delivered it into the hand of the overseers, and to the hand of the
workmen. 18. Then Shaphan the scribe told the king, saying, Hilkiah
the priest hath given me a book. And Shaphan read it before the king.
19. And it came to pass, when the king had heard the words of the law,
that he rent his clothes. 20. And the king commanded Hilkiah, and
Ahikam the son of Shaphan, and Abdon the son of Micah, and Shaphan the
scribe, and Asaiah a servant of the king's, saying, 21. Go, enquire of
the Lord for me, and for them that are left in Israel and in Judah,
concerning the words of the book that is found: for great is the wrath
of the Lord that is poured out upon us, because our fathers have not
kept the word of the Lord, to do after all that is written in this
book. 22. And Hilkiah, and they that the king had appointed, went to
Huldah the prophetess, the wife of Shallum the son of Tikvath, the son
of Hasrah, keeper of the wardrobe; (now she dwelt in Jerusalem in the
college;) and they spake to her to that effect. 23. And she answered
them, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Tell ye the man that sent you
to me. 24. Thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will bring evil upon this
place, and upon the inhabitants thereof, even all the curses that are
written in the book which they have read before the king of Judah: 25.
Because they have forsaken Me, and have burned incense unto other
gods, that they might provoke Me to anger with all the works of their
hands; therefore My wrath shall be poured out upon this place, and
shall not be quenched. 26. And as for the king of Judah, who sent you
to enquire of the Lord, so shall ye say unto him, Thus saith the Lord
God of Israel concerning the words which thou hast heard; 27. Because
thine heart was tender, and thou didst humble thyself before God, when
thou heardest His words against this place, and against the
inhabitants thereof, and humbledst thyself before Me, and did rendst
thy clothes, and weep before Me; I have even heard thee also, saith
the Lord. 28. Behold, I will gather thee to thy fathers, and thou
shalt be gathered to thy grave in peace, neither shall thine eyes see
all the evil that I will bring upon this place, and upon the
inhabitants of the same. So they brought the king word again.'--2
CHRON. xxxiv. 14-28.
About one hundred years separated Hezekiah's restoration from
Josiah's. Neither was more than a momentary arrest of the strong tide
running in the opposite direction; and Josiah's was too near the edge
of the cataract to last, or to avert the plunge. There is nothing more
tragical than the working of the law which often sets the children's
teeth on edge by reason of the fathers' eating of sour grapes.
I. The first point in this passage is the discovery of the book of the
Law.
The book had been lost before it was found. For how long we do not
know, but the fact that it had been so carelessly kept is eloquent of
the indifference of priests and kings, its appointed guardians.
Lawbreakers have a direct interest in getting rid of lawbooks, just as
shopkeepers who use short yardsticks and light weights are not anxious
the standards should be easily accessible. If we do not make God's law
our guide, we shall wish to put it out of sight, that it may not be
our accuser. What more sad or certain sign of evil can there be than
that we had rather not 'hear what God the Lord will speak'?
The straightforward story of our passage gives a most natural
explanation of the find. Hilkiah was likely to have had dark corners
cleared out in preparation for repairs and in storing the
subscriptions, and many a mislaid thing would turn up. If it be
possible that the book of the Law should have been neglected (and the
religious corruption of the last hundred years makes that only too
certain), its discovery in some dusty recess is very intelligible, and
would not have been doubted but for the exigencies of a theory.
'Reading between the lines' is fascinating, but risky; for the reader
is very likely unconsciously to do what Hilkiah is said to have
done--namely, to invent what he thinks he finds.
Accepting the narrative as it stands, we may see in it a striking
instance of the indestructibleness of God's Word. His law is
imperishable, and its written embodiment seems as if it, too, had a
charmed life. When we consider the perils attending the transmission
of ancient manuscripts, the necessary scarcity of copies before the
invention of printing, the scattering of the Jewish people, it does
appear as if a divine hand had guarded the venerable book. How came
this strange people, who never kept their Law, to swim through all
their troubles, like Caesar with his commentaries between his teeth,
bearing aloft and dry, the Word which they obeyed so badly? 'Write it
... in a book, that it may be for the time to come for ever and ever.'
The permanence of the written Word, the providence that has watched
over it, the romantic history of its preservation through ages of
neglect, and the imperishable gift to the world of an objective
standard of duty, remaining the same from age to age, are all
suggested by this reappearance of the forgotten Law.
It may suggest, too, that honest efforts after reformation are usually
rewarded by clearer knowledge of God's will. If Hilkiah had not been
busy in setting wrong things right, he would not have found the book
in its dark hiding-place. We are told that the coincidence of the
discovery at the nick of time is suspicious. So it is, if you do not
believe in Providence. If you do, the coincidence is but one instance
of His sending gifts of the right sort at the right moment. It is not
the first time nor the last that the attempt to keep God's law has led
to larger knowledge of the law. It is not the first time nor the last
that God has sent to His faithful servants an opportune gift. What the
world calls accidental coincidence deeper wisdom discerns to be the
touch of God's hand.
Again, the discovery reminds us that the true basis of all religious
reform is the Word of God. Josiah had begun to restore the Temple, but
he did not know till he heard the Law read how great the task was
which he had taken in hand. That recovered book gave impulse and
direction to his efforts. The nearest parallel is the rediscovery of
the Bible in the sixteenth century, or, if we may take one incident as
a symbol of the whole, Luther's finding the dusty Latin Bible among
the neglected convent books. The only reformation for an effete or
secularised church is in its return to the Bible. Faded flowers will
lift up their heads when plunged in water. The old Bible, discovered
and applied anew, must underlie all real renovation of dead or
moribund Christianity.
II. The next point here is the effect of the rediscovered Law. Shaphan
was closely connected with Josiah, as his office made him a confidant.
It is ordinarily taken for granted that he and the other persons named
in this lesson formed a little knot of earnest Jehovah worshippers,
fully sympathising with the Reformation, and that among them lay the
authorship of the book. But we know nothing about them except what is
told here and in the parallel in Kings. One of them, Ahikam, was a
friend and protector of Jeremiah, and Shaphan the scribe was the
father of another of Jeremiah's friends. They may all have been in
accord with the king, or they may not.
At all events, Shaphan took the book to Josiah. We can picture the
scene--the deepening awe of both men as the whole extent of the
nation's departure from God became clearer and clearer, the tremulous
tones of the reader, and the silent, fixed attention of the listener
as the solemn threatenings came from Shaphan's reluctant, pallid lips.
There was enough in them to touch a harder heart than Josiah's. We
cannot suppose that, knowing the history of the past, and being
sufficiently enlightened to 'seek after the God of David his father,'
he did not know in a general way that sin meant sorrow, and national
disobedience national death. But we all have the faculty of blunting
the cutting edge of truth, especially if it has been familiar, so that
some novelty in the manner of its presentation, or even its repetition
without novelty sometimes, may turn commonplace and impotent truth
into a mighty instrument to shake and melt.
So it seems to have been with Josiah. Whether new or old, the Word
found him as it had never done before. The venerable copy from which
Shaphan read, the coincidence of its discovery just then, the
dishonour done to it for so long, may all have helped the impression.
However it arose, it was made. If a man will give God's Word a fair
hearing, and be honest with himself, it will bring him to his knees.
No man rightly uses God's law who is not convinced by it of his sin,
and impelled to that self-abased sorrow of which the rent royal robes
were the passionate expression. Josiah was wise when he did not turn
his thoughts to other people's sins, but began with his own, even
whilst he included others. The first function of the law is to arouse
the knowledge of sin, as Paul profoundly teaches. Without that
penitent knowledge religion is superficial, and reformation merely
external. Unless we 'abhor ourselves, and repent in dust and ashes,'
Scripture has not done its work on us, and all our reading of it is in
vain. Nor is there any good reason why familiarity with it should
weaken its power. But, alas! it too often does. How many of us would
stand in awe of God's judgments if we heard them for the first time,
but listen to them unmoved, as to thunder without lightning, merely
because wo know them so well! That is a reason for attending to them,
not for neglecting.
Josiah's sense of sin led him to long for a further word from God; and
so he called these attendants named in verse 20, and sent them to
'enquire of the Lord ... concerning the words of the book.' What more
did he wish to know? The words were plain enough, and their
application to Israel and him indubitable. Clearly, he could only wish
to know whether there was any possibility of averting the judgments,
and, if so, what was the means. The awakened conscience instinctively
feels that threatenings cannot be God's last words to it, but must
have been given that they might not need to be fulfilled. We do not
rightly sorrow for sin unless it quickens in us a desire for a word
from God to tell us how to escape. The Law prepares for the Gospel,
and is incomplete without it. 'The soul that sinneth, it shall die,'
cannot be all which a God of pity and love has to say. A faint promise
of life lies in the very fact of threatening death, faint indeed, but
sufficient to awaken earnest desire for yet another word from the
Lord. We rightly use the solemn revelations of God's law when we are
driven by them to cry, 'What must I do to be saved?'
III. So we come to the last point, the double-edged message of the
prophetess. Josiah does not seem to have told his messengers where to
go; but they knew, and went straight to a very unlikely person, the
wife of an obscure man, only known as his father's son. Where was
Jeremiah of Anathoth? Perhaps not in the city at the time. There had
been prophetesses in Israel before. Miriam, Deborah, the wife of
Isaiah, are instances of 'your daughters' prophesying; and this
embassy to Huldah is in full accord with the high position which women
held in that state, of which the framework was shaped by God Himself.
In Christ Jesus 'there is neither male nor female,' and Judaism
approximated much more closely to that ideal than other lands did.
Huldah's message has two parts: one the confirmation of the
threatenings of the Law; one the assurance to Josiah of acceptance of
his repentance and gracious promise of escape from the coming storm.
These two are precisely equivalent to the double aspect of the Gospel,
which completes the Law, endorsing its sentence and pointing the way
of escape.
Note that the former part addresses Josiah as 'the man that sent you,'
but the latter names him. The embassy had probably not disclosed his
name, and Huldah at first keeps up the veil, since the personality of
the sender had nothing to do with her answer; but when she comes to
speak of pardon and God's favour, there must be no vagueness in the
destination of the message, and the penitent heart must be tenderly
bound up by a word from God straight to itself. The threatenings are
general, but each single soul that is sorry for sin may take as its
very own the promise of forgiveness. God's great 'Whosoever' is for me
as certainly as if my name stood on the page.
The terrible message of the inevitableness of the destruction hanging
over Jerusalem is precisely parallel with the burden of all Jeremiah's
teaching. It was too late to avert the fall. The external judgments
must come now, for the emphasis of the prophecy is in its last words,
it 'shall not be quenched.' But that did not mean that repentance was
too late to alter the whole character of the punishment, which would
be fatherly chastisement if meekly accepted. So, too, Jeremiah taught,
when he exhorted submission to the 'Chaldees.' It is never too late to
seek mercy, though it may be too late to hope for averting the outward
consequences of sin.
As for Josiah, his penitence was accepted, and he was assured that he
would be gathered to his fathers. That expression, as is clear from
the places where it occurs, is not a synonym for either death or
burial, from both of which it is distinguished, but is a dim promise
of being united, beyond the grave, with the fathers, who, in some one
condition, which we may call a place, are gathered into a restful
company, and wander no more as pilgrims and sojourners in this lonely
and changeful life.
Josiah died in battle. Was that going to his grave in peace? Surely
yes! if, dying, he felt God's presence, and in the darkness saw a
great light. He who thus dies, though it be in the thick of battle,
and with his heart's blood pouring from an arrow-wound down on the
floor of the chariot, dies in peace, and into peace.