The king’s men went to a woman

This volume opened in Week One with Josiah tearing his robe over a book found in a renovation. This is what happened next, and it is the part almost nobody tells.

The king gives an order to five men — the high priest, the royal secretary, the king’s servant, and two others named in the text.

Go and inquire of the LORD. That is the assignment: find out whether what we have just read applies to us.

Jeremiah was prophesying in Jerusalem at the time. So was Zephaniah.

The five men went to neither of them.

Huldah the prophetess. Named, with her husband named, and his father, and his grandfather — and her address given: the Second District of Jerusalem.

The text tells you where she lived because they went to her house. Five of the most powerful men in Judah walked across the city with a scroll and knocked on a door.

Her answer opens with the messenger formula from Week Eight — thus says the LORD — and what follows is the confirmation of every curse in the book: I am going to bring disaster on this place and on its people, according to everything written in the book the king of Judah has read.

Then, to the king personally, a second word: because your heart was tender and you humbled yourself before the LORD when you heard, and because you tore your robes and wept, I have heard you. You will be gathered to your grave in peace, and your eyes will not see all the disaster.

Two verdicts in one interview. The nation, and the man. The book was true about both.

And notice what she is doing. She is not adding to the scroll. She is answering the exact question the king asked: does this apply to us? Her whole prophecy is an application of a text they already had in their hands.

The reform that follows is the largest in Judah’s history — the high places torn down, the Passover kept as it had not been kept since the days of the judges, and the text says the king read the book aloud to the whole assembly himself.

And notice what the delegation was not sent to settle. Not whether the scroll was genuine — nobody in the account questions that. The king’s question is whether the words apply to them now, which is the only question a reader ever really has once he believes the Book is what it says it is.

It began with a workman finding a scroll, and it turned on a woman in the Second District saying what it meant.

Huldah is one of a small number of women called a prophetess in the Old Testament, with Miriam, Deborah, Noadiah and Isaiah’s wife. Her oracle is the longest of any of them and is preserved in both 2 Kings 22 and 2 Chronicles 34, essentially unchanged.

The Second District, or Mishneh, was a newer quarter of Jerusalem, mentioned also in Zephaniah 1:10. The detail is the kind of thing an account includes when it is reporting rather than composing.

Whether the scroll found was Deuteronomy, part of it, or the whole Pentateuch has been discussed for two centuries, and the curses Huldah confirms match the covenant curses of Deuteronomy 28–29 closely. The text itself calls it the Book of the Law found in the house of the LORD.

Josiah’s peaceful death is worth reading carefully against 2 Kings 23:29, where he is killed at Megiddo. The promise was that he would not see the disaster coming on Jerusalem, and he did not; the city fell more than twenty years later.

Jeremiah began prophesying in Josiah’s thirteenth year, five years before the scroll was found, so he was active and available. Why the delegation went to Huldah instead is not explained; the text simply reports where they went and what she said.

Look it upH1875 דָּרַשׁ darash, to seek, inquire of · H5031 נְבִיאָה nebiah, prophetess · H7401 רָכַך rakak, to be soft, tender · H3665 כָּנַע kana, to humble oneself

Then read Isaiah 66:2 from Week Eleven beside Huldah’s word to the king. God says He looks at the man who is humble and contrite and trembles at His word; Huldah tells Josiah that is exactly why he was heard.

Where this touches2 Kings 22:8–23:25 · 2 Chronicles 34:14–33 · Deuteronomy 28–29 · Isaiah 66:2 (Week Eleven, Day Six) · 2 Kings 22 (Week One, Day One). Josiah, Ezra, the wilderness, the chariot, Emmaus, Pentecost, Apollos, Daniel, Stephen, Timothy’s household, Jehoshaphat, Nazareth, the dry bones, Agrippa, the Sadducees, Samuel and the Philippian jailer were the earlier scenes.