38 HULDAH

In this teaching we will observe that a King, priest and prophet worked together to obtain, understand and implement the will of God in one of the greatest revivals in the history of Israel. Josiah, the great reformer, had commanded the repairing of the temple. In the process of carrying out those instructions, happily the book of the law was found and brought to the king. We do not know if this was the original manuscript, of the five books of Moses written by his own hand or only an ancient authentic copy. Possibly it was what Moses had instructed should be laid up in the most holy place as Deuteronomy 31:24-26 says, “24 After Moses finished writing in a book the words of this law from beginning to end, 25 he gave this command to the Levites who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord: 26 “Take this Book of the Law and place it beside the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God. There it will remain as a witness against you.” Had it been there all the past years of Israel’s history? We don’t know. It may have been lost or missing. Perhaps it was carelessly mislaid and neglected, thrown into a corner, carelessly or lightly tossed on a shelf by someone who did not know its value and it was forgotten there.

It is also possible that it was intentionally hidden by command of an idolatrous king, or his agents. He may have been restrained by God’s plan or their own consciences from burning and destroying it, but nevertheless buried it, in hopes it would never see the light again. Yet again it is possible it was carefully laid up by some of its friends, to prevent it from falling into the hands of its enemies. Whoever were the instruments of its preservation, we ought to acknowledge the hand of God in it. If this was the only authentic copy of the Pentateuch existing then, surely the hearts of all good people would tremble for that sacred treasure, as Eli did for the ark. Surely we now can thank God that He preserved it and Hilkiah found it. God’s care of the Bible is a plain indication of His interest in it.

Whether this was the only authentic copy existing or not, it seems the things in it were new both to the king himself and to the high priest. The king, on the reading of it, rent his clothes. One lesson for the Christian leader today is to remember that when the Word of God is neglected, spiritual decline will be the result. This raises the question that if the book of the law was lost, it seems difficult to determine what rule Josiah used in doing what was right in the sight of the Lord. Did they have or use only part of the Law? If so, this might teach us that no summaries, extracts, or collections, out of the Bible can thoroughly convey and preserve the knowledge of God and His will like the entirety of the Bible itself can. It was then no marvel that the people were so corrupt when the book of the law was such a scarce thing among them; where that vision is not present, the people perish.

It was a great demonstration of God’s favor that the book of the law was brought to light, to direct and quicken that blessed reformation which Josiah had begun. It is a sign that God has mercy in store for a people when he magnifies His law among them and makes that honorable, and furnishes them with means for the increase of Scripture-knowledge. The translating of the Scriptures into common contemporary languages was the glory, strength, and joy of the Reformation. We also can learn from the fact that they were about a good work, repairing the temple, when they found the book of the law. Those who do their duty according to their knowledge shall have their knowledge increased. To him who has, more will be given. The book of the law was an abundant reward for their care and cost invested in the repair of the temple. Hilkiah the priest was exceedingly well pleased with the discovery.

Use your imaginations with me as he speaks to Shaphan the secretary, “Oh, rejoice with me, for I have found the book of the law, I have found, that jewel of great value. Here, carry it to the king; it is the richest jewel of his crown. Read it to him. He walks in the way of David his father, and, if he is like David, he will love the book of the law and welcome it; it will be his delight and his counsellor.” From this point on we hear no more of the repairing, only the cleansing, of the temple: no doubt that good work went on well; but the book of the law that was found will occupy us now. It is not laid up in the king’s cabinet as a piece of antiquity, a rarity to be admired, but it is read to the king. Blessed is anyone who gives their truest honor to their Bibles, who studies them and converses with them daily, feeds on that bread and walks by that light. Men of honor and business must look on an acquaintance with God’s Word to be their best business and highest honor.

What did Josiah do when he heard the contents of the law? He tore his clothes, as one ashamed of the sin of his people and afraid of the wrath of God; he had long thought the case of his kingdom was bad, by reason of the idolatries and sins that had been found among them, but he never thought it was as bad as he perceived it to be by the book of the law now read to him. The tearing of his clothes signified the tearing of his heart for the dishonor done to God, and the ruin he saw coming on his people. He knew things were morally poor, but when he saw the standard God had given, the law, the plumb line, he realized how their condition was very poor.

Josiah wanted to know how to react. How should he respond? What shall we do; what course can we take to turn away God’s wrath and prevent the judgments which our sins deserve? Verse 13 says, “Go and inquire of the Lord for me and for the people and for all Judah about what is written in this book that has been found. Great is the Lord’s anger that burns against us because those who have gone before us have not obeyed the words of this book; they have not acted in accordance with all that is written there concerning us.” Convictions of sin and wrath should motivate this enquiry just as the jailer in Philippi spontaneously asked, “What must I do to be saved?” Josiah was a national leader and we see also a spiritual leader. He acted quickly to learn what his reaction  and response should be. If you will inquire, inquire quickly, before it is too late. Josiah’s word infer, “Certainly great is the anger that is kindled against us; if this is the Word of God, as no doubt it is, and He will be true to His word, as no doubt He will be, we are all undone. I never thought the threatenings of the law so severe, and the curses of the covenant so terrible as now I find them to be. It is time to look around about us if these be in force against us.” Those who are truly apprehensive of the seriousness of God’s anger cannot help but be eager for His favor, and inquisitive how they may make their peace with Him. National leaders should inquire for their people, and study how to prevent the judgments of God that they see hanging over them.

In this series, we are searching for lessons for leaders from the lives of the prophets of Israel, so we come now to an important part of this story. We recognize the importance of the Word of God which has now been found, but we need to hear from a living spokesperson for God as to what we should do. In this regard Josiah does a wise thing. He inquires of Huldah the prophet by some of his great men. In this way he put an honor on his inquiry, by employing those of the first rank to take care of this matter. So his dignitaries go to Huldah.

Verse 14 says, “Hilkiah the priest, Ahikam, Akbor, Shaphan and Asaiah went to speak to the prophet Huldah, who was the wife of Shallum son of Tikvah, the son of Harhas, keeper of the wardrobe. She lived in Jerusalem, in the New Quarter.” The spirit of prophecy, that wonderful treasure, was sometimes put not only into earthen vessels, but into the weaker vessels, that the excellency of the power might be of God. Miriam helped to lead Israel out of Egypt as Micah 6:4 reminds us, “I brought you up out of Egypt and redeemed you from the land of slavery. I sent Moses to lead you, also Aaron and Miriam.” Deborah judged them, and now Huldah instructed them in the mind of God and she being a woman and a wife was no disqualification at all to her being a prophetess; marriage is honorable in all. It was a mercy to Jerusalem that when Bibles were scarce they had prophets, as afterwards, when prophecy ceased, that they had more Bibles.

God never leaves himself without witness, because He leaves sinners without an excuse. Jeremiah and Zephaniah prophesied at this time in Israels history, yet the king’s messengers sought Huldah’s counsel, possibly because her husband had a place at court as keeper of the wardrobe. Perhaps they had had a stronger and longer relationship with her, her ministry and her reputation as a mouthpiece for God. Their acquaintance with her and great assurances of her calling as a prophet drew them to her. They had probably consulted her on other occasions, and had found that the Word of God in her mouth was truth. She was near, since she lived in Jerusalem, in a place called Mishneh, the second rank of buildings from the royal palace. Some sources say that she prophesied among the women, the court ladies, being herself one of them, who it is probable had their apartments in that place. Happy the court that had a prophet in it and knew to appreciate, value and utilize her ministry and insights.

As Huldah responds to the king’s inquiry we will notice that she does not speak with elaborate words like a person of the court, but with plain and direct words like a prophet. “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: Tell the man who sent you to me . . .” (15). This makes her position as a prophet all the more believable since she represented God Who sees kings on the same level as other persons. Kings, though gods to us, are men to God, and will deal with them in equal justice. With God there is no respect of persons. She let Josiah know what judgments God had in store for Judah and Jerusalem as verses 16 and 17 say, “This is what the Lord says: ‘I am going to bring disaster on this place and its people, according to everything written in the book the king of Judah has read. 17 Because they have forsaken me and burned incense to other gods and aroused my anger by all the idols their hands have made, my anger will burn against this place and will not be quenched.’” The degree and duration of Israel’s punishment is addressed.

It is so kindled that it will not be quenched; the decree has gone out; it is too late now to think of preventing it. The iniquity of Jerusalem will not be purged with sacrifice or offering. Hell is unquenchable fire. She refers to their sins: “They have committed them, as it were, with design, and on purpose to provoke me to anger. It is a fire of their own kindling; they would provoke me, and at length I am provoked.” She speaks of God’s threatenings: “The evil I bring is according to the words of the book which the king of Judah has read; the Scripture is fulfilled in it.” Those who refuse to be bound by the precept shall be bound by the penalty. God will be no less terrible to impenitent sinners than His Word says He will be.

She also tells him what mercy God had in store for him. God has noticed that Josiah’s heart was tender toward Him. Verse 19 says, “19 Because your heart was responsive and you humbled yourself before the Lord when you heard what I have spoken against this place and its people—that they would become a curse and be laid waste—and because you tore your robes and wept in my presence, I also have heard you, declares the Lord.” God will give different treatment to those who separate themselves from evil. Josiah is earning a reprieve. He is earning favor from God by his good response to the word of God.  God will distinguish those who distinguish themselves. The preceding kings and the people in general were hardened and their hearts not humbled, but Josiah’s heart was tender. He received the impressions of God’s Word, trembled at and yielded to it; he was exceedingly grieved for the dishonor done to God by the sins of his fathers and of his people. Josiah was afraid of the judgments of God, which he saw coming against Jerusalem. This is tenderness of heart, and in this spirit he humbled himself before the Lord, and expressed these godly affections by tearing his clothes and weeping before God.

He who sees in secret says it was before him, and He heard it, and put every tear into His bottle. It is a paradox that those who most fear God’s anger are the least likely to feel it. It should seem that the words of Leviticus 26:32 had a great influence on Josiah. God had said through Moses, “32 I myself will lay waste the land, so that your enemies who live there will be appalled” and those words penetrated deep into Josiah’s heart and he tore his clothes to show his grief. We don’t often realize that God and we are both responding to each other. We may be aware that we are responding to God. What He says and does effects us and we respond to it. But that God is also responding to us is not always so clear in our minds. Josiah was humbled, broken, contrite and repentant in view of what he found in God’s law and because of Josiah’s spiritual posture, God said He would delay the fulfillment of His intention to give fair punishment for Israel’s sin until after Josiah was dead.

Verse 20 tells us what Huldah told the messengers to tell the king “20 Therefore I will gather you to your ancestors, and you will be buried in peace. Your eyes will not see all the disaster I am going to bring on this place.” From this we can now suppose that the saints had a good impression of what would happen on the other side of death, or else being gathered to their fathers would not have been perceived or given as a message of comfort. Josiah could not possibly prevent the judgment itself, but God promised him he would not live to see it. Considering that he died before he was forty years old, this would have been only a small reward for his great efforts at reform if there had not been another world in which he should be more abundantly rewarded. Josiah evidently was one of those referred to in Hebrews 1:16 who “. . . were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.”

Isaiah had earlier said, as recorded in Isaiah 57:1,2, “The righteous perish, and no one takes it to heart; the devout are taken away, and no one understands that the righteous are taken away to be spared from evil. 2 Those who walk uprightly enter into peace; they find rest as they lie in death.” If Josiah understood this as a kind of other worldly reward, then Huldah’s message to him would have been a great comfort. The same thing is true for us. If we understand the value of things in the other world, we will not fear death, but rather anticipate it. It will seem like a reward to be able to look forward to that. Josiah died in battle just a short time before the captivity in Babylon, that great trouble, in comparison with which the rest were as nothing, so that he might be truly said to die in peace and did not live to be taken to Babylon as a captive. Josiah died in the love and favor of God, which secures for us such a wonderful peace that no circumstances of dying, no, not even dying in the field of war, could alter the nature of, diminish, break or destory.

The Word of God had been found in the temple, but without the valuable ministry of Huldah, Josiah would not have been aware of the accurate up-to-date application of that Word. It was the prophet Huldah who affirmed, interpreted and applied the lesson to Josiah. Josiah was so encouraged by her in his efforts of reform that he organized a public reading of the words of the covenant that had been found in the temple, renewed the covenant, proceeded with the temple cleansing, ordered the articles for the worship of Baal and Asheroth to be carried out and burned, did away with the priests of Baal, removed the Asheroth pole from the temple, demolished the altar and high place Jeroboam had set up at Bethel, and celebrated the passover on such a scale that the historian says it was the greatest celebration in all the times of the judges and kings of Israel. 2 Kings 23:21-22 say, “The king gave this order to all the people: ‘Celebrate the Passover to the Lord your God, as it is written in this Book of the Covenant.’ 22 Neither in the days of the judges who led Israel nor in the days of the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah had any such Passover been observed.”

We cannot take credit away from Josiah for performing all of these wonderful cleansing reforms, but neither would it be fair to not give credit to the prophetic ministry of Huldah who responded to the request of the king with insightful and strong words of encouragement to him. She was part of the force for righteousness in what Josiah and his team accomplished. From this we who are eager to learn leadership lessons from the lives of the prophets can be encouraged to participate in current events, speak up for God and encourage righteousness in national leadership.

Huldah was such a prophet and she will not go unrewarded.